orning," he said pleasantly; "my little friend here tells me you
are Miss Bibby. May I introduce myself? My name is Kinross. I have met
the Judge on several occasions and I think he will vouch for my
respectability. May I take these small ones up the road with me? We are
going in hot pursuit of two of the world's best things--eggs and bacon.
I will return them safely--thank you very much. Good-bye."

That was all. Not another word, though Miss Bibby, going over and over
again in her mind the great meeting, tried hard to imagine that she had
forgotten some notable thing he had said. Then she began to torture
herself with fears that she had behaved stupidly. The suddenness had
been too much for her; she could not recollect one solitary thing that
she had said except a fluttering "Certainly," when he asked permission
to take the children with him. What must he have thought of her?

Ah, if it could only happen over again when she should have had time to
collect her faculties and make some brilliant and scathing repartee as
the women in his books so frequently did. But then again, what chance
had his speech offered for repartee? What kindling of conversation could
there be when the only tinder provided was--eggs and bacon?

She worried herself to such a degree that when breakfast-time came, her
appetite, usually small, had almost reached vanishing-point.

The cause of her flutterings was striding along the red dusty road, Lynn
and Max having all they could do to keep up with him.

He, too, had had his moment of disappointment. Lynn had told him there
was no other lady in their house but Miss Bibby; and then the figure
that had given him some pleasurable emotions an hour ago--the slender
white figure that had walked on the path between the flowers--turned out
on close view to be merely a thin woman of almost forty, in a floppy
puce-coloured muslin gown.

And Lynn was unwittingly merciless to the temporary occupant of her
mother's place. When Kinross had asked her if it was Miss Bibby who was
up so early and walking among the trees, she volunteered, in addition to
the affirmative--which would have been quite enough--that she walked
about like that when she was doing some of her deep-breathing exercises.
And that after her deep-breathing exercises she always skipped backwards
for five minutes, and after the skipping she lay down flat on the floor
and kept lifting up her head in such a funny way.

And of course this led to