y, "certainly, sir. They 're fine
this morning--the biscuits, I mean. Fine!"

"Very good," said Armitage. He pulled two chairs to the table and was
leaving the room when the girl looked over her shoulder.

"Are n't you going to join us?" she asked.

"Well," said Armitage smiling, "I was going to breakfast in the galley.
It is so warm by the range, you know."

"Nonsense! Don't mind us. It's rather novel breakfasting with one's
maid--and a stranger."

She said this in rather an absent manner, as though the fact to which
she called attention were almost too obvious for remark. Certainly it
was not said in any way to impel Armitage to introduce himself, and he
had no wish to take advantage of a lame opportunity.

"Yes," he said, seating himself at one end of the table; "it impresses
me that way, too."

To say that the biscuits were delicious and the coffee uplifting,
inspiring, would, in the mind of all who have shared the matutinal
hospitality of the steward of the _General_, be an inadequate
expression of gastronomic gratitude. Let it be sufficient to note that
Anne Wellington beamed gratefully upon the steward, who, expanding
under the genial influence, discussed his art with rare unction.

"The secret," he said, leaning confidentially over the back of Miss
Wellington's chair, "is to be sparin' of the yeast; and then there is
somethin' in raisin' 'em proper. Now, the last time Mrs. Jack
Vanderlip was down here, she made me give her the receipt for them
identical biscuits; gave me a dollar for it."

"Mrs. Jack Vanderlip!" cried Miss Wellington, "did she ever grace your
table?"

"Did she ever grace this table! Well, I should say so, and the Tyler
girls and Hammie Van Rensselaer and Billy Anstruther,--he comes down
here often."

Miss Wellington laughed.

"I often have marvelled at Billy's peach-blow complexion," she said;
"now I have the secret."

"Don't tell him I said so, Miss Wellington," said the steward.

The girl, with a biscuit poised daintily in her fingers, did not seem
surprised to hear her name.

"Your acquaintance is rather exten--rather large," she said.

The steward actually blushed.

"I live in Newport, miss," he said.

"Oh!" That was all, and the curious little smile did not leave her
face. But Armitage noticed that in some way the steward found no
further opportunity for exercising his garrulity.

Evidently she assumed that Armitage now knew whom she was, if he had
not k