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There was no impossibility there, no doubt even, or the peradventure of one. There was only the ineluctable truth. The aproned man disclosed it. His thumbless hand had held the book. From his mouth, in which there was a pipe, had come the benediction. He was Dr. Grantly. That was the ineluctable truth, the truth which already perhaps she had intercepted in the land of Beauty and Horror.

"All right, we won't stop. But all these fellows probably haven't seen a white woman for months. You can't blame them for admiring. You do look good to other men besides me, you know." So they rode through the camp with but a nod to the aproned cook, who thrust out his head, and a gray-haired man with glasses, who humped over a drafting board under an awning.

A housemaid's perfunctory dusting was not sufficient here; and Miss Wendover, gloved and aproned, and armed with leathers and brushes, gave at least half an hour every morning to the care of her old furniture. Another half hour was devoted to china; and the floral arrangements indoors, even in this wintry season, occupied half an hour more.

There were the aproned and frowsy students, of uncertain age, who seemed to have no life except that which existed under studio skylights. There were, also, a few younger girls, who took their art life with less painful solemnity; and, of course, the models in the "partially draped" and the "altogether."

"I always knew they did it, but I never supposed they really DID!" said Sammy, following her aunt through the shaded brightness of the Pullman to an enchanted table, from which one could see the glorious landscape flashing by. It was all like a dream the cities they fled through, the luxury of the big house at Sippican, the capped and aproned maids that were so eager to make one comfortable.

They parted with mutual salutations, two gentlemen who had carried an honorable transaction to a worthy close. A white- aproned waiter smiled upon them tolerantly and held open the door that Rufin might enter to his lunch. It was in this manner that the strings were pulled which sent Rufin on foot to Montmartre, with the sun at his back and the streets chirping about him.

The reader in the stone-pulpit on the south wall of the refectory began his business on the sounding of a bell; and at a second stroke there was a hum and clash of dishes from the kitchen end, and the aproned servers entered in line bearing the dishes.

Noon of the next day brought the Panther coughing into the bay, flanked on the port side by a scow upon which rested a twin to the iron monster that jerked logs into her brother's chute. To starboard was made fast a like scow. That was housed over, a smoking stovepipe stuck through the roof, and a capped and aproned cook rested his arms on the window sill as they floated in.

On Sunday morning, an aproned valet having informed him that Monsieur was demanded at the telephone, he had to use the telephone. Lois told him that he must come to lunch, and that afterwards he would be escorted to the races. Dejection was instantly transformed into a gay excitation.

There was even a cheerful smell of cooking at the end of one of the corridors, and he had caught a glimpse of two or three aproned lay brothers, busy in the firelight and glow of a huge kitchen, over great copper pans.