I won't pray, I won't put on beads. But, see here, what about what they
call in this country my collation? You know I'm a gump on an empty
stomach."

"We'll have our coffee on the road, at a little inn-table out of doors
in the sunrise."

"Fine! By-by. See you again in about twenty minutes."

Every fiber composing Aurora twittered with a distinct and separate glee
while she hurried through her toilet, a little breathless, a little
distracted, and mortally afraid Estelle would hear and come to ask
questions. From her wardrobe she drew the things best suited to the day
and her humor: a white India silk all softly spotted with appleblossoms,
of which she had said when she considered acquiring it that it was too
light-minded for her age and size, but yet, vaulting over those
objections, had bought and had made up according to its own merits and
not hers; a white straw hat with truncated steeple crown, the fashion of
that year, small brim faced with moss-green velvet, bunch of green
ostrich-tips, right at the front, held in place by band and buckle.

Her parasol was a thing of endless lace ruffles, her wrap a thing of
vanity.

She passed out through the dressing-room, she crept down the stairs,
laughing at her own remark that it was awfully like an elopement. The
house was not yet astir; only the Ildegonda sweeping out the kitchen,
and old Achille out in the garden picking early insects off his plants.

At the door she greeted Gerald with all the joy of meeting again a
playmate. He had on the right playmate's face. She gave him both hands,
and he clasped them to the elbow, shaking them with satisfactory fire,
while their eyes laughed a common recognition of the adventure as a
lark.

At the gate waited the open carriage, a city-square cabriolet, but clean
and in repair, drawn by two strong little brown horses, with rosettes
and feathers in their jingling bridles, ribbons in their whisking
braided tails, and driven by a brown young man of twenty, with a
feather, too, in his hat, which he wore aslant and crushed down over his
right ear. To make the excursion pleasanter to himself, he was by
permission taking along a companion of his own age, who occupied the low
seat beside his elevated one, and in contrast with his vividness, the
pride of life expressed by his cracking whip, the artistically singular
sounds he made in his throat to encourage the horses, was a washed-out
personality, good at most to do the jumping off a