o observe
the arrivals. As a dusty, becapped and begoggled figure got down from
the seat beside the driver, Milly exclaimed excitedly, "Why, it's Roy
Gilbert!" and ran towards the courtyard. The car finally disgorged
Nettie Gilbert and her uninteresting fourteen-year-old daughter. They
came in for luncheon, and their story was soon told. Paris was hot, and
in despair of dispelling Roy's thickening ennui at his European exile,
which threatened to terminate their trip, Mrs. Gilbert had induced her
husband to charter the car for a tour of Normandy and Brittany. Having
done all the north-coast watering-places and remembering that the
Bragdons were staying at this little place "with a funny name," they had
decided to make them a call. Roy Gilbert ate copiously and denounced
hotels, food, and the people, while Milly and Nettie Gilbert talked
Chicago and Baby.

"We want to see a '_Pardon_,'" Mrs. Gilbert announced at last, "and
we've come to take you and your husband with us."

It was the season of that famous Brittany festival, so Baedeker said,
and they had seen some evidences of it in the little villages through
which they had passed. Did Milly know of a good one? The Gilberts were
as aesthetically lazy as they were weak in French, and of course quite
helpless in Brittany, whose peasants seemed to them dirty baboons with a
monkey language. Milly quickly recalled that some of the artists had
been talking of the famous _Pardon_ at Poldau, a little
fisher-settlement at the extreme tip of the western coast, where the
costumes were said to be peculiarly rich and quaint. She had wanted to
visit it with Jack, but he had become so much absorbed in his new
picture that they had given up the idea. And there was Baby--she did not
like to leave her.

"Yvonne will do all right," her husband urged. "Better take the
chance--I'll look after Virgie."

So after much encouragement, though with misgivings, Milly consented to
accompany the Gilberts in their car for a couple of days and show them
the glories of the Brittany countryside.

"I owe Nettie so much," she explained privately to her husband, by way
of apology. "I can't very well refuse--and they are so helpless, poor
dears!"

"You'll have a bully time," he replied encouragingly. "Don't worry about
anything. I'll watch Yvonne like a cat."

"And telegraph me instantly if anything goes wrong."

"Of course.... Don't hurry back if they should want you to go farther.
It'll be good