Ebenezer Cadell was one of those men—daily becoming more rare—who, after a life of strenuous work, can face, at breakfast, a mutton chop. In this nervous age the fact in itself stands for an attribute of success. For next to money a good digestion will thrust an ambitious man far.
He did not even take his chop in obedience to his doctor's wishes, but out of a healthy appetite for that peculiar delicacy. He liked it as a second course, after eggs or fish or bacon, rather underdone and large, remembering lean years of porridge.
Breakfast over, he filled his pipe before the fire, where his boots were warming, and steeped his soul in the Liberal papers with the air of governing the Empire.
Mrs. Cadell, naturally, took in the Morning Post to keep in touch with that social world where names m
