This had the singular
effect of making him glum, ceremonious, and ready to take offence.
Here, now was this pack of officious idiots blundering in upon him.
Under ordinary circumstances he would have tried to be polite. As it
was, he could hardly bring himself to give them a civil word of
welcome. They caught him on his way from the bath to the garden--to a
succulent breakfast under his favourite pine-tree within view of the
Tyrrhenian; and his own flowered silk dressing-gown and
gold-embroidered Turkish slippers contrasted oddly with the solemn
vestments, savouring of naphthaline, which they had donned for the
funeral. After the barest of apologies for a costume which, he ventured
to think, was as suitable as any other for a gentleman at that hour of
the morning, he bade them be seated and listened to what the speaker
had to say--blinking ominously the while through his spectacles, like an
owl with the sun in its eyes.
CHAPTER XXVI
It was a long and rambling exposition.
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