"Not exactly murders," she replied.  "Plenty of blunders." 

 Henry rose from the table as she entered; he dropped his open arms on seeing that she was not alone. Miss Loriner poured out coffee, and Henry, at the sideboard, recited the dishes that were being kept warm there.  "Sausages," decided Gertie, "because it's Sunday morning!"  She smiled, out of sheer content at being thus waited upon, and gave them a description of Praed Street, where the meal was continually interrupted by purchasers of journals, buyers of half-ounces of shag. She remarked that it would have been possible here to take breakfast out of doors, and Henry rang and gave instructions to Rutley, the butler, and the next moment, as it seemed, they were at table on the lawn, with sparrows pecking at stray crumbs. Henry, asking permission to smoke, lighted a pipe. 

 "I've only seen you with cigarettes before," she remarked.  "Doesn't the tobacco smell good in the morning air! Do you know what I miss most of all? Sound of cabs going along to Paddington Station. I shouldn't care for the country, you know, not for always."  She rattled on, jumping, as was her custom when happy, from one subject to another. 

 "It's miraculous to hear you talking again," he declared.  "Last night we could scarcely get a word out of you." 

 "Tell me if I babble too much." 

 "You dear little woman!" he cried protestingly. 

 Clarence Mills came down, and Miss Loriner was relieved of the difficult task of keeping her eyes averted. Clarence, on the plea that he had some writing to do, wondered whether he might be excused from church, and Henry recommended the billiard-room as a quiet place for work; there was a writing-table at the end, and no one would interfere. Miss Loriner, when Clarence had finished his meal, offered to conduct him to the apartment; it was, it seemed, over the stables at the back of the house, and not easy for a stranger to find; moreover, Miss Loriner felt anxious to see how writing people started their work. Thus Henry Douglass and Gertie Higham would have been left alone, but that Jim Langham, exercising his gift of interference, appeared, rather puffed about the eyes, and one or two indications hinting that the task of shaving had not been without accident. Jim Langham's temper in the early hours seemed to be imperfect; he made only a pretence of eating, crumbling toast and chipping the top of an egg; he admitted he never felt thoroughly in form until after lunch. When Henry suggested that 

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