“I—­I am sure Miss Thursdale has done nothing to deserve your curses,” she began diplomatically.

“Good Heavens, Miss Courtenay, you—­Oh, I say, you know I didn’t mean Eleanor.  The old pelican—­that’s the one.  Old Mrs. Intruder,” he grated.

“I am sure it is all quite regular,” observed Anne, so seriously that he looked at her in wonder.  It began to creep into his head that his speculations were wrong, after all.  At any rate it seemed advisable to put a sharp curb on his tongue.

“I’m sorry I spoke as I did about the old lady,” he said, after a moment’s reflection.  “I was thinking of the way in which she left you out of her invitation to breakfast.”

“And yourself, incidentally,” she smiled.

“Miss Courtenay, I’m—­I’m a confounded ass for not thinking of your breakfast.  It’s not too late.  We are both hungry.  Won’t you come with me and have a bit of something to eat?  We’ll try that farmhouse ourselves.  Come, let us hurry or the crowd will get in ahead of us.  Ham and eggs and coffee! they always have that sort of breakfast in farmhouses, I’m told.  Come.”

[Illustration:  Seated side by side...two miserable partner in the fiasco]

She sprang up cheerfully, and followed him across the meadow to the farmhouse.  The Van Truder party was entering the door, smoke pouring forth suggestively from a chimney in the rear of the house.  The sudden desire for ham and eggs was overcoming, in a way, the pangs of outraged love; there was solace in the new thought.

That breakfast was one never to be forgotten by four persons; two others remembered it to their last days on account of its amazing excellence.  A dozen persons were crowded into the little dining-room; no one went forth upon his travels with an empty stomach.  No such profitable harvest had ever been reaped by the farmer.  Dauntless and Anne ate off of a sewing-table in the corner.  Mrs. Van Truder deliberately refused to hear Mr. Windomshire’s timorous suggestion that they “make room” for them at the select table.  Silent anathemas accompanied every mouthful of food that went down the despot’s throat, but she did not know it.  Fortunately the lovers were healthy and hungry.

They fared forth after that memorable breakfast with lighter hearts, though still misplaced by an unrelenting fate.

All the way to Omegon Anne sat in the seat with the seething Dauntless, each nursing a pride that had received almost insupportable injuries during the morning hours.  Windomshire and Eleanor, under the espionage of the “oldest friend of the family,” moped and sighed with a frankness that could not have escaped more discerning eyes.  Mrs. Van Truder, having established herself as the much needed chaperon, sat back complacently and gave her charges every opportunity to hold private and no doubt sacred communication in the double seat just across the aisle.

Eleanor pleaded fatigue, and forthwith closed her wistful eyes.  Windomshire, with fine consideration, sank into a rapt study of the flitting farm lands.  Having got but little sleep among the coals, he finally dropped off into a peaceful cat nap.