Explore "The Black Abbot" by Edgar Wallace on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The luncheon was not a genial meal. Harry had acquired the disgraceful habit of bringing a book to his meals, and he was utterly absorbed in the volume and left Dick and his visitor to carry on a conversation as though he were not present.
Mr. Puttler, who was a man of wide experience, was neither embarrassed by his magnificent surroundings -- for Lord Chelford lived in a princely style, three footmen and a butler waiting upon them -- nor did he feel it necessary to live up to the state in which he found himself. He was altogether unaffected, had a fund of anecdotes, and could tell funny stories without apparently enjoying them himself, which is the art of amusement. Only once did Dick interrupt his brother's reading.