ever heard of things
fallen out thus, there is left this triumph:

"Ah, sir, or ah, madame, wouldn't you like to?"

* * * * *

A fugitive wind rollicking in from sea next morning swept through
the palace and went on around the world; and thereafter it had an
hundred odourous ways of attracting attention, which were merely its
own tale of what pleasant things it had seen and heard on high.

For example, that breakfast. A cloth had been laid at one end of the
long stone table whereat, since the days of Abibaal, brother to
Hiram, friend to David, kings had breakfasted and banqueted, and
this cloth had now been set with the ancient plate of the
palace--dishes that looked like helmets and urns and discs. Here
Olivia and Antoinette, in charming print frocks, made a kind of tea
in a kind of biblical samovar and served it in vessels that
resembled individual trophies of the course. And here St. George and
Amory praised the admirable English muffins which some one had
taught the dubious cook to make; and Mr. Augustus Frothingham
tip-fingered his way about his plate among alien fruits and
queer-shaped cakes. "Are they cookies or are they manna?" Amory
wondered, "for they remind me of coriander seeds." And here Mrs.
Hastings, who always awoke a thought impatient and became
ultra-complacent with no interval of real sanity, wistfully asked
for a soft-boiled egg and added plaintively:

"Though I dare say the very hens in Yaque lay something besides
eggs--pineapples, very likely."

"I suppose," speculated Amory, "that when we get perfectly
intuitionized we won't have to eat either one because we'll know
beforehand exactly how they both taste."

"A _reductio ad absurdum_, my young friend," said the lawyer
sternly; "the real purpose of eating will remain for ever
unchanged."

Later, while Mrs. Hastings and Mr. Frothingham went out on the
terrace in the sun and wished for a morning paper ("I miss the
weather report so," complained Mrs. Hastings) the four young people
with Jarvo and Akko for guides set out to explore the palace. For
St. George had risen from his two hours' sleep with some
clearly-defined projects, and he meant first to go over every niche
and corner of the great pile where one--say a king--might be hidden
with twenty other kings, and no one be at all the wiser.

What a morning it was! When the rollicking wind got to that part of
the story it must have told about it in such intim