D ads ...

As I enter the library my companions are sitting around a round table in the middle of the room, eating and drinking and chattering.

The are having a very English breakfast with fried eggs, bacon, sausages, baked beans, grilled tomatoes and mushrooms, buttered toast with jam or marmalade.

»They are devouring all our supllies«, I can hear an elderly woman with grey hair in an apron whisper to Gilbert, the butler, »and the supermarket will not open until tomorrow morning. He could have warned me that there would guests.«

The two of them are standing next to the door by the window, nodding in my direction as they notice me.

»Hildegard!« Professor Sideburns suddenly shouts out waving an empty teapot in the direction of the elderly woman. »We need more tea. Bring us more tea.«

»As you wish, master«, the woman says sarcastically. »I am running, I am flying. I kept the kettle boiling in the kitchen.«

»Well, well, well.«

Professor Sideburns is smuging self-satisfied.

»Mr. Bibble, take a seat or a look around the library first. As you wish.«

And the library really is a library, not very big but crammed with shelves at the walls and tables filles with books and papers and maybe pergaments. I wonder why the archaelogy professor chose this room to sit down for breakfast. The others don't really have much space to twist and turn.

On a wooden stand like a music stand between two windows at the outside wall I can spot our green treasure map. The numbers and arrows are gone. It now shows shapes and forms of an island with mountains and rivers, again.

»Let me place this seat here for you.«

Professor Sideburns is moving a piano stool from the piano to the table. A piano? Yes, as small as this room is, there is also a black piano next to the round table.

But I am not sure whether I am feeling like having breakfast right now. My eyes are wandering from the treasure map on its' wooden stand through the windows to the meadows outside the castle.

Sheep. They are still watching us. And haven't they come nearer in the meantime? What are they up to?

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Today is Sunday, the 15th of January 2023.

Breakfast in England