“I do--and plenty of them. Also bacon--a good deal of bacon. Oh, and by the way----” added Sam, leaning over the banisters. “Yes?” “----toast--lots and lots of toast.” “I’ll get you all you can eat.” “You will? Tell me,” said Sam, “it has been puzzling me greatly. How do you manage to get that dress on over your wings?” CHAPTER TEN SAM FINDS A PHOTOGRAPH Sam, when he came downstairs some twenty minutes later, was definitely in what Mr. Hash Todhunter would have described as the pink. The night had been bad, but joy had certainly come in the morning. The sight of the breakfast tray on a small table by the window set the seal on his mood of well-being; and for a long, luxurious space he had eyes for nothing else. It was only after he had consumed the eggs, the bacon, the toast, the coffee and the marmalade that he yielded to what is usually the first impulse of a man who finds himself in a strange room and began to explore. It was some half minute later that Claire Lippett, clearing the dining-room table, was startled to the extent of dropping a butter dish by a loud shout or cry that seemed to proceed from the room where she had left her guest. Hurrying thither, she found him behaving in a strange manner. He was pointing at a photograph on the mantelpiece and gesticulating wildly. “Who’s that?” he cried as she entered. He seemed to have difficulty with his vocal cords. “Eh?” “Who the devil’s that?” “Language!” “Who is it? That girl--who is she? What’s her name?” “You needn’t shout,” said Claire, annoyed. The photograph which had so excited this young man was the large one that stood in the centre of the mantelpiece. It represented a girl in hunting costume, standing beside her horse, and it was Claire’s favourite. A dashing and vigorous duster, with an impressive record of smashed china and broken glass to her name, she always handled this particular work of art with a gentle tenderness. “That?” she said. “Why, that’s Miss Kay, of course.” She came forward and flicked a speck of dust off the glass. “Taken at Midways, that was,” she said, “two or three years ago, before the old colonel lost his money. I was Miss Kay’s maid then--personal maid,” she added with pride. She regarded the photograph wistfully, for it stood to her for all the pomps and glories of a vanished yesterday, for the brave days when there had been horses and hunting costumes and old red chimneys against a blue sky and rabbits in the park and sunlight on the lake and all the rest of the things that made up Midways and prosperity. “I remember the day that photograph was took. It was printed in the papers, that photograph was.” Sam continued to be feverish. “Miss Kay? Who’s Miss Kay?” “Miss Kay Derrick, Mr. Wrenn’s niece.” “The man who lives here, do you mean?”