“To think, uncle dear, that somebody else has come at last to see our island! Why, there’s so much to show him I can hardly wait, nor know where best to begin.”
“Suppose, Miss Impatience, we begin with breakfast? Here comes Adrian. Ask his opinion.”
“Never was so hungry in my life!” agreed that youth, as he came hastily forward to bid them both good-morning. “I mean—not since last night. I wonder if a fellow that’s been half-starved, or three-quarters even, will ever get his appetite down to normal again? It seems to me I could eat a whole wild animal at a sitting!”
“So you shall, boy; so you shall!” cried Angelique, who now came in, carrying a great dish of browned and smoking fish. This she placed at her master’s end of the table and flanked it with another platter of daintily crisped potatoes. There were heaps of delicate biscuits, with coffee and cakes galore; enough, the visitor thought, to satisfy even his own extravagant hunger, and again he wondered at such fare in such a wilderness.
“Why, this might be a hotel table!” he exclaimed, in unfeigned pleasure. “Not much like lumberman’s fare: salt pork, bad bread, molasses-sweetened tea, and the everlasting beans. I hope I shall never have to look another bean in the face! But that coffee! I never smelled anything so delicious.”
“Had some last night,” commented Angelique, shortly. She perceived that this stranger was in some way obnoxious to her beloved master, and she resented the surprise with which he had seen her take her own place behind the tray. Her temper seemed fairly cross-edged that morning, and Margot remarked:—
Don’t mind Mother Angelique. She’s dreadfully disappointed that nobody died and no bad luck followed her breaking a mirror, yesterday.
“No bad luck?” demanded Angelique, looking at Adrian with so marked a manner that it spoke volumes. “And as for dying—you’ve but to go into the woods and you’ll see.”
Here Tom created a diversion by entering and limping straight to the stranger’s side, who moved away, then blushed at his own timidity, seeing the amusement with which the others regarded him.
“Oh! we’re all one family here, servants and everybody,” cried the woman, tossing the eagle a crumb of biscuit.