IN WILD WOOD GREEN 97

Breakfast was a complete success. And, after all, I
do think that the success of a man’s breakfast, depends
almost entirely upon the appetite with which he sits
down to attack it.

By-and-by, for instance, Douglas Stuart looked
forward to having now and then what he called a real
Scotch breakfast, at which good oatmeal should figure
largely. To-day it was English, a good old-fashioned
morning meal of bacon and eggs, beautiful yesterday’s
bread, the purest of butter and best of coffee.

Douglas himself was cook, although Uncle Ben
would readily have taken that office.

As for the horses, they had already been fed and
seen to. He isn’t much worth of a camper-out who
sits down to his own meal without first seeing to that
of his nags.

To Lady Bute’s share fell a couple of dog-biscuits,
and all the scraps. inten Lowerin had bread and
milk, which he turned up his nose at.

There was a spot. of blood on Linten’s snowy breast,
and when asked to account for it, he lowered his brows
a little; a way he had when guilty.

“That’s my business,” he seemed to say. “ What
is the good, anyhow, of being a gipsy’s cat if you
can’t have a bird for breakfast ?”

“T hope, Linten,” said Carleton, “it wasn’t a lark.”

Linten sang and said nothing.

In fact Linten’s motto was “Sing and say nothing,”
and a very good one it is,

Polly’s cage was cleaned out, and she had fresh

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