“It isn’t hard you’ll find the old man on you, sweetheart,” he told Ina, “but there’s one thing he’s got to have, and that is his breakfast, and a good old Southern one, with plenty to eat, at eight o’clock, or you’ll find him as cross as a bear all day to pay for it.”

Ina laughed and blushed, and sprinkled the sugar on her cereal.

“Ina will not mind,” said Mrs. Carroll.  “She and Charlotte have never been sleepy-heads.”

Eddy glanced resentfully at his mother.  He was a little jealous in these days.  He had never felt himself so distinctly in the background as during these preparations for his sister’s wedding.

“I am not a sleepy-head, either, Amy,” said he.

“It is a pity you are not,” said she, and everybody laughed.

“Eddy is always awake before anybody in the house,” said Ina, “and prowling around and sniffing for breakfast.”

“And you bet there is precious little breakfast to sniff lately, unless we have company,” said Eddy, still in his resentful little pipe; and for a second there was silence.

Then Mrs. Carroll laughed, not a laugh of embarrassment, but a delightful, spontaneous peal, and the others, even Major Arms, who had looked solemnly nonplussed, joined her.

Eddy ate his cereal with a sly eye of delight upon the mirthful faces.  “Yes,” said he, further.  “I wish you’d stay here all the time, Major Arms, and stay engaged to Ina instead of marrying her; then all the rest of us would have enough to eat.  We always have plenty when you are here.”

He looked around for further applause, but he did not get it.  Charlotte gave him a sharp poke in the side to institute silence.

“What are you poking me for, Charlotte?” he asked, aggrievedly.  She paid no attention to him.

“Don’t you think it is strange we don’t hear from papa?” said Charlotte.

Major Arms stared at her.  “Do you mean to say you have not heard from him since he went away?” he asked.

“Not a word,” replied Mrs. Carroll, cheerfully.

“I am a little uneasy about papa,” said Ina, but she went on eating her breakfast quite composedly.

“I should be if I had ever known him to fail to take care of himself,” said Mrs. Carroll.

“It’s the other folks that had better look out,” remarked Eddy, with perfect innocence, though would-be wit.  He looked about for applause.

Arms’s eyes twinkled, but he bent over his plate solemnly.

“Eddy, you are talking altogether too much,” Anna Carroll said.

“You are unusually silly this morning, Eddy,” said Charlotte.  “There is no point in such a remark as that.”

“You said Arthur had gone to Chicago?” Arms said to Mrs. Carroll.

“Well, the funny part of it is, we don’t exactly know whether he has or not,” replied Mrs. Carroll, “but we judge so.  Arthur had been talking about going to Chicago.  He had spoken about the possibility of his having to go for some time, and all of a sudden that morning came a telegram from New York saying that he was called away on business.”