For a moment Brockway was tempted to answer four fools according to their folly. Then he bethought him that he had but now been seeking a pretext which would open the door of the private car. Here was a makeshift; a poor one, to be sure, but better than none. Wherefore, instead of quarrelling with the deputation, he rose with placatory phrases in his mouth. "Very well; I'll see what can be done. But you must give me a little time; the scenery--" pointing to the monotonous landscape circling slowly with the onward sweep of the train--"is not exactly of the rear-platform variety yet." After which he retreated to the rear vestibule of the Tadmor and stood looking out through the glass panel in the door at the hamper-laden front platform of the Naught-fifty, trying to muster courage to take the chilling plunge. For he knew that the year agone episode was not altogether pleasing to the father of Miss Gertrude Vennor. III THE PRIVATE CAR "Yes, sah; mighty sorry, sah; but we cayn't cook you-all's dinner, no-how, sah. Wateh-pipe's done bu'sted in de range." President Vennor turned and regarded the big-bodied cook of the Naught-fifty with the eye-sweep of appraisal which Mrs. Burton had found so annoying. "No dinner, you say? That's bad. Why did you burst the pipe?" "I--I didn't bu'sted it, sah; hit des bu'sted hitse'f--'deed it did, sah!" "Well, can't you serve us a cold lunch?" "Might do dat--yes, sah; ef dat'll do." "What is that, papa; no luncheon to-day?" asked a young woman, coming down the compartment to stand beside the President's chair. There was a family resemblance, but in the daughter the magic of femineity had softened the severer characteristics until they became winsome and good to look upon. The cool gray eyes of the father were Gertrude's inheritance, also; but in the eyes of the daughter the calculating stare became the steady gaze of clean-hearted guilelessness; and in her even-tinted complexion there was only a suggestion of the sallow olive of the father's clean-shaven face. For face and figure, Gertrude owed much to birth and breeding, and it was small wonder that Frederick Brockway had lost his heart to her in time-honored and romantic fashion. The President answered his daughter's query without taking his eyes from the big-bodied cook. "No; there is something the matter with the range. Ask the others if they would prefer a cold luncheon in the car to the _table d'hôte_ at the dinner station." Gertrude went to the other end of the compartment and stated the case to Mrs. Dunham, the chaperon of the party; to Priscilla and Hannah Beaswicke, two young women of the Annex; to Chester Fleetwell, A.B., Harvard, by the skin of his teeth, but the ablest oarsman of his class by a very safe majority; and to Mr. Harold Quatremain, the President's secretary. The dinner station carried it unanimously, and Gertrude announced the vote.