Columbine had been hauled to the side of the road and Rogue was allowed to nibble blue-grass at her pleasure. A fire had been kindled, and Jean FranÇois was broiling bacon speared on the end of a sharpened stick. A coffee-pot was steaming upon a few hot embers raked aside for that especial purpose. A great loaf of white bread lay on a cloth on the bottom of an upturned bucket. Nance, over behind the cart, was arranging her toilet. She had rummaged within the yellow depth of the van, filled with much pedlers' finery, and, among other necessities, discovered a small mirror. This she propped upon the hub against a spoke of the wheel. With its aid she readily set herself to rights.

Just as she appeared, fresh and resplendent as the morning itself, Jean FranÇois announced breakfast. He directed her to be seated on the bank of the turnpike, placed a clean board some two feet square upon her lap, and gave to her two slices of firm bread between which lay several strips of crisply cooked bacon. He then brought her a heavy china cup filled with delicious coffee. This, with sparkling cool water from a spring near the bridge, constituted his offering for the morning meal. After giving himself a like helping, they ate in silence. Once a farm wagon, in which three men rode, was driven by. As they passed, they stared very markedly. The pedler, usually so amiable, scowled furtively at them. Nance became uneasy, for Jean FranÇois had scarcely spoken to her since his torrent of French and English invectives which came so volubly upon his surprise at finding her unexpectedly. This was very unlike her old-time friend the umbrella man. She began to realize that it was a very delicate problem with which she had precipitately overwhelmed him. She wondered how he would solve it, yet was indifferent enough not to offer any assistance.

After the meal, with his usual deliberateness, he drew Pierrett from his pocket, filled her with an adorable mixture, and, with a brand from the fire, proceeded to light her. As the blue smoke curled above his head, he leaned upon his elbow, otherwise his body lay at full length upon the earth, and, at last, looked at the petulant and unhappy Nance.

"Son," said he, without any apparent consideration of the sex implied by the title and as if he were subtly indicating the relationship which he wished them to assume; "son, tell me all about it."

"I ran away," exclaimed Nance in her most bewitching manner.

She had decided upon her method of procedure. She would be seductive, helpless, and appeal to his sympathy and chivalry. A course which he readily perceived was going to make his sexless comradeship rather difficult.

"To be sure, sir," was the reply. And then as if a bit alarmed:

"I sincerely hope that no one will think for a moment that you have been kidnapped!"

"I shouldn't wonder if they did," she brightened in mischievous delight. "Wouldn't it be exceedingly funny?"

"It would," was the laconic reply, accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders.

Jean FranÇois removed Pierrett from his mouth. After examining the pipe carefully, he refilled it, and continued his smoke. Five minutes passed without a word, and then, looking up quite seriously at his charge, he said:

"See here, Nancy Bricktop, are you aware of the fact that you are no longer a ten-year-old child?"

Nance flushed, a trifle embarrassed.

"Anyone but myself," he continued, "would say you were pretty much of a grown-up woman.... My dear child—"

"Now, don't you 'my-dear-child' me," she cried tearfully. "All of them conspire against me, and you aren't a bit better!"

Jean FranÇois arose and placed his pipe in his pocket. He walked the length of the cart a half dozen times. It appeared to be rather a bad beginning.

"Nance," said he, turning and for the first time showing sympathy in his voice and manner, "Come! Tell me all about it. Why did you run away?"

"I—I cannot tell you," she replied, dropping her head.

"O, but you must," said he. "You haven't stolen anything?"

"Perhaps," she smiled archly.

"Seriously, now little jade, forget that I have reminded you that you are grown up, for you are not. Just think of me as the old umbrella man of your barefoot years. I—"

"Of my barefoot years?" she exclaimed. "What do you know—"

"Of the years, my dear," he explained, "when you used to run barelegged and barefoot along the dusty road pleading to go gipsying with me. Do you remember?"

"That's part of why I'm here, Jean FranÇois," she said.

"Nance, Nance, Nance," he repeated, slightly exasperated, "go right along and tell me why you have left Oldmeadow, Doctor Longstreet, and—and the practise of medicine, and dropped like a lost star into my top-o'-the-morning?"

"Charles," said she tearfully.

"Ah, I thought so.... What has he done? Eloped with your Aunt Barbara?... Tell me, tell me!"

"Charles came home," she explained, looking into her lap, "after four or five years of college, imbued with the idea that I was his property.... He acted as if he owned me!" she blurted indignantly.

"Well, doesn't he?" asked Jean FranÇois, innocently.

"Doesn't he! Doesn't he!" she flung at him. "That's just what grandfather asked."

"And your Aunt Barbara?" he queried humorously.

"Aunt Barbara," she continued with fine sarcasm, "my precise, correct, conventional Aunt Barbara, who will not acknowledge, Jean FranÇois, that she has such vulgar things as legs; this dear, darling devotee of propriety actually pointed to herself as a horrible example of a too-exacting young woman!... My Aunt Barbara is a silly old ass!"

"How you do mix your genders when you become excited, my dear-a."

"You're a goose!" she exclaimed. "A darling, old adorable goose.... You never liked my Aunt Barbara."

"But my question, Nance ... I thought things were all decided years ago. Do tell me."

"Dr. Charles Reubelt King," she pronounced the name with withering scorn, "was disgustingly presumptuous. He treated me as if he were feeling the pulse of the world and was just about to administer to it the particular pill which would cure all of its ills.... I despise pompousness, pedantry, and unconscious condescension in a man.... As for me—well, if he didn't say it, he acted it. I was nothing. I knew nothing. At my best I was but a red-headed spiritualized slave—and not always quite spiritualized!... I knew nothing!"

"It seems to hurt you pretty bad, Nance," he said mildly.

"What?... Nothing hurts me!"

"Do you, Bricktop?"

"Do I what?"

"Know anything?" asked Jean FranÇois.

"Certainly I do, and you know it, you horrid old pedler. Didn't I sense the real river and the road and the happy hills long, long ago?... And as for you, Monsieur, I know things about you of which our stupid Charles Reubelt has never dreamed. Shall I tell you things, Jean FranÇois?"

Jean FranÇois raised his hand in protest, shaking his head forbiddingly.

"Never mind," said he, good humoredly.

"Ah, Jean FranÇois," she exclaimed in a burst of tenderness, "I preferred the road and—"

"Finish your Dr. Charles, whom you must remember is quite young and possesses a new diploma," said he, interrupting her hastily.

"The undesirable part of it is," said she, obeying, "is that grandfather and Aunt Barbara are on his side. They say he is such a pretty, nice boy with such an acceptable family and promising prospects. All of which, so far as that is concerned, is true. They thought I should have led him to the altar accompanied by the Oldmeadow brass band, with me dancing in front as David did before the Ark of the Covenant."

"Nance," said Jean FranÇois, extending his hand to her, "you are always pretty nearly right. You might have shown more wisdom by not carrying things so far as to run away like a spoiled child.... Here's my hand. I'm with you.... Now tell me how you got here?"

While she entered into the details of her trip he busied himself with hitching Rogue to the cart and turning the face of the caravan about to the north. She had learned through a note, requiring an answer, which Jean FranÇois had written to Doctor Longstreet, that he would call about the first of June for his mail at the little town which lay behind them in the valley. She had arrived the night before, and, after learning at the post-office that he had not called, she, doubtless very foolishly, but with her old-time adventurous spirit, had started out to meet him.

"Come, let's be going," said he. And he helped her onto a little apron-like seat which projected over the shafts and had for a back the front of the body of the van.

"All right, Rogue," said Jean FranÇois for the second time that morning, and they were off.

Then it was Nance seemed to discover that they had turned and were going back up the hill from which he had descended only two hours before.

"Where are we going, Jean FranÇois?" she asked with slight alarm.

"Back to Dr. Charles Reubelt King," he smiled, "to teach him how not to be a fool!"

Nance frowned for a moment, but saw the old friendly strength restored to the face of the man walking at Rogue's flank, and with a contented little sigh she sank back into the comfortable cushions of Columbine.