ugh a helping of bacon and eggs. Then he attacked the
cold ham.

"There's nothing," he said, "like a good breakfast when you have a hard
day's work before you. I expect to be pretty busy, and I'll hardly be
in for lunch. I suppose you've no objection to my making myself a few
sandwiches before I start? I may pick up a meal somewhere in the
course of the day, but I may not. It's always well to be on the safe
side."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to marry Simpkins to Miss King, of course. I thought we
settled that last night."

"Don't keep up that joke, J. J. It was all very well pulling my leg
last night, and I didn't mind it a bit; but a thing like that gets to
be stale the next morning."

"There's no joke that I can see," said Meldon. "If you read the papers
with any sort of attention lately, you'd understand that Mrs. Lorimer
is the last woman in the world who can be regarded as comic."

"We weren't talking about Mrs. Lorimer."

"Yes, we were. We were talking about Miss King, and she is Mrs.
Lorimer; although at present she prefers to be called Miss King. I
think she's quite right. It would be extremely bad taste to go on
using poor Lorimer's name after what she did to him. He wouldn't like
it. You wouldn't like it yourself, Major, if she'd killed you."

"I don't know that she did kill him," said the Major. "Even supposing
that you're right in identifying the two women--which of course you're
not--you'd still have no earthly right to assume that Mrs. Lorimer is a
murderess. The jury found her innocent."

"Of course it did. Any jury would. She's a most attractive-looking
woman. You'd have found her innocent yourself if you'd been on that
jury."

"I would not."

"Yes, you would. I've seen her, remember. You haven't, so you can't
possibly tell what you'd have done."

"I don't see," said the Major, "that her being good-looking proves that
she murdered her husband."

"No, it doesn't, but it accounts for the jury letting her off. The
evidence was amply sufficient for a conviction, and the judge summed up
dead against her. And any way it doesn't matter to us about the
evidence, for she owned up to me in the train. I told her I'd keep her
secret for her, and I don't intend to tell anybody except you. Apart
from her feelings altogether it wouldn't suit us for the story to get
out in Ballymoy. Simpkins would be choked off at once if he knew it.
Men have such a ridiculous prej