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 I could not contrive to equal, or even to excel, these early exploits, with all the culinary equipment of “Sans Souci” at my command.

“Leave that to me, Galvin,” said I. “I shall manage very well.”

Galvin only paused to post me upon the whereabouts of the tea, the milk, the eggs, the coal and the kindling-wood, and then departed. From a window I beheld her, hastening down the path, arrayed like a lily of the field (somewhat advanced in years) and, five minutes later, I was pottering about my kitchen like a kitten in a work-basket. From the child with the jam-pot to the usurper of a throne, I suppose there is no one of us who does not exult in the sensation of being temporary monarch of what he has only a questionable right to survey. I am confident to this instant that all would have been well with me and with my luncheon if Arbuthnot had not come down from town, and dropped in upon me, most inopportunely,