‘Tête-à-fiddlestick; Bink is my chaperon. If you are impertinent I will ask Mr. MacCloskie to join us to-morrow morning. Sugar? Yes, of course, sugar and cream. Aren’t the eggs and bacon nice? I cooked them. It was Bink’s suggestion. I was going to confine myself to rolls and strawberry jam; but the eggs and bacon are more fun, aren’t they? You should have heard how they frizzled and sputtered in the frying-pan. I had no idea bacon was so noisy.’ ‘Your first lesson in cookery,’ said Edgar. ‘We shall hear of you graduating at South Kensington.’ ‘My first lesson, indeed! Why, I fried pancakes over a spirit-lamp ever so many times at Asnières; and I don’t know which smelt nastiest, the pancakes or the lamp. Our dormitory got into awful disgrace about it.’ She had seated herself on her camp-stool and was drinking tea, while she watched Edgar eat the eggs and bacon with an artistic interest in the process. ‘Is the bacon done?’ she asked. ‘Did I frizzle it long enough?’ ‘It’s simply delicious; I never ate such a breakfast.’ It was indeed a meal in fairyland. The soft clear morning light, the fresh yet balmy atmosphere, the sunlit river and shadowy boat-house, all things about and around lent their enchantment to the scene. Edgar forgot that he had ever cared for anyone in the world except this girl, with the soft gray eyes and sunny hair, and all too captivating smile. To be with her, to watch her, to enjoy her girlishness and bright vivacity, to minister to her amusement and wait upon her fancies—what better use could a young man, free to take his pleasure where he liked, find for his life? And far away in the future, in the remoteness of years to come, Edgar Turchill saw this lovely being, tamed and sobered and subdued into the pattern of his ideal wife, losing no charm that made her girlhood lovely, but gaining the holier graces of womanhood and wifehood. To-day she was little more than a child, seeking her pleasure as a child does, draining the cup of each new joy like a child; and he knew that he was no more to her than the agreeable companion of her pleasures. But such an association, such girlish friendship so freely given, must surely ripen into a warmer feeling. His pulses could not be so deeply stirred and hers give no responsive throb. There must be some sympathy, some answering emotion in a nature so intensely sensitive. Cheered by such hopeful reflections, Mr. Turchill ate an excellent breakfast, while Daphne somewhat timorously tried an egg, and was agreeably surprised to find it tasted pretty much the same as if the cook had fried it; a little leathery, perhaps, but that was a detail. ‘I feel so relieved,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have been surprised if I had turned them into chickens. And now, if you have quite finished we’ll begin our rowing. I have a conviction that if I don’t learn to feather properly to-day I shall never accomplish it while I live.’