wo well-laden trays. She forestalled Burnamy's reproaches
for her delay, laughing and bridling, while she set down the dishes of
ham and tongue and egg, and the little pots of coffee and frothed milk.

"I could not so soon I wanted, because I was to serve an American
princess."

Mrs. March started with proud conjecture of one of those noble
international marriages which fill our women with vainglory for such of
their compatriots as make them.

"Oh, come now, Lili!" said Burnamy. "We have queens in America, but
nothing so low as princesses. This was a queen, wasn't it?"

She referred the case to her hireling, who confirmed her. "All people say
it is princess," she insisted.

"Well, if she's a princess we must look her up after breakfast," said
Burnamy. "Where is she sitting?"

She pointed at a corner so far off on the other side that no one could be
distinguished, and then was gone, with a smile flashed over her shoulder,
and her hireling trying to keep up with her.

"We're all very proud of Lili's having a hired man," said Burnamy. "We
think it reflects credit on her customers."

March had begun his breakfast with-the voracious appetite of an
early-rising invalid. "What coffee!"

He drew a long sigh after the first draught.

"It's said to be made of burnt figs," said Burnamy, from the
inexhaustible advantage of his few days' priority in Carlsbad.

"Then let's have burnt figs introduced at home as soon as possible. But
why burnt figs? That seems one of those doubts which are much more
difficult than faith."

"It's not only burnt figs," said Burnamy, with amiable superiority, "if it
is burnt figs, but it's made after a formula invented by a consensus of
physicians, and enforced by the municipality. Every cafe in Carlsbad
makes the same kind of coffee and charges the same price."

"You are leaving us very little to find out for ourselves," sighed March.

"Oh, I know a lot more things. Are you fond of fishing?"

"Not very."

"You can get a permit to catch trout in the Tepl, but they send an
official with you who keeps count, and when you have had your sport, the
trout belong to the municipality just as they did before you caught
them."

"I don't see why that isn't a good notion: the last thing I should want
to do would be to eat a fish that I had caught, and that I was personally
acquainted with. Well, I'm never going away from Carlsbad. I don't wonder
people get their doctors to tell them to come back.