‘Why, Arbuthnot! Some one told me you were at the bottom of the sea. You and Linda Thorne. Locksley Hall sort of thing! So goes the story of the moment. You are the very man I could have wished to meet, sir. Come back to breakfast with me. I have two of the finest mullet ever caught in this Channel, and Kutscheel, my black fellow, could dress a mullet with Brillat Savarin himself. Now, I’ll hear of no refusal.’ ‘I have a wife, Colonel. The argument, naturally, does not carry weight with you. Still, it is an argument. I have a wife, and she expects me.’ ‘Send up a line from my house telling Mrs. Arbuthnot where you are. I positively wouldn’t waste such fish on a man of less cultivated taste.’ In the Colonel’s lack-lustre eye there came a momentary glow of feeling. ‘In my time we used to look upon a palate--a palate, sir, as one of the essentials of a gentleman. The young men nowadays don’t know a mullet from a stickleback.’ Well, reader, a dual breakfast with old de Gourmet was a temptation, after its sort, that Gaston Arbuthnot ranked high. The Colonel’s admirably arranged house was screened by just sufficient leafy shadow from the eastern sun, refreshed by just sufficient air on the side where it opened to the sea. The Colonel’s black fellow was a finished artist; his cellar the long result of half a lifetime. To Gaston--true Parisian in all the more important business of existence--a noontide breakfast was the crowning meal of the day. Man dines, he would contend, as dogs or horses feed, because his body needs replenishment. Breakfast, with its delicate light dishes, fine wine, fruits and coffee,--breakfast succeeded by a prime cigar, morning sunshine, and morning talk--is, essentially, a refined, a human repast. The nine o’clock tea and toast, the marmalade, bloaters, or bacon, sacred to the British householder, were scarcely less horrible to him than the buckwheat cakes and maple syrup, the porridge, the pie, the ‘shad’ of American breakfast-tables. ‘If you can give me half an hour’s law, Colonel de Gourmet, time to have a bath, to get a change of apparel, and hear my wife’s version of the Locksley Hall episode, I will come to you. Otherwise, I know the nature of mullet, and----’ ‘I appreciate your delicacy, my dear sir. But my black fellow and I thoroughly understand each other. Those mullet,’ said the Colonel, with a quiver of the lips, ‘are now reposing, each in its paper shroud, buttered, flavoured to a nicety. They will not approach the fire until Kutscheel sees me turn yonder corner beneath the Arsenal gates. I will wait for you here--putting the last finishing touch, alas! to a poorish appetite--as I limp up and down in the shade. But don’t exceed thirty-five minutes. We owe it to our cook, a human being with passions and weaknesses like unto our own, to have a conscience in these matters.’