Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/296



ROM the innocent lips of Cousin Egbert the following morning there fell a tale of such cold-blooded depravity that I found myself with difficulty giving it credit. At ten o'clock, while I still mused pensively over the events of the previous day, he entered the Grill in search of breakfast, as had lately become his habit. I greeted him with perceptible restraint, not knowing what guilt might be his, but his manner to me was so unconsciously genial that I at once acquitted him of any complicity in whatever base doings had been forward.

He took his accustomed seat with a pleasant word to me. I waited.

"Feeling a mite off this morning," he began, "account of a lot of truck I eat yesterday. I guess I'll just take something kind of dainty. Tell Clarice to cook me up a nice little steak with plenty of fat on it, and some fried potatoes, and a cup of coffee and a few waffles to come. The Judge he wouldn't get up yet. He looked kind of mottled and anguished, but I guess he'll pull around all right. I had the chink take him up about a gallon of strong tea. Say, listen here, the Judge ain't so awful much of a stayer, is he?"

Burning with curiosity I was to learn what he could tell me of the day before, yet I controlled myself to the calmest 282