Ned had shot an antelope a day or two previous, and antelope steak, broiled over a glowing bed of wood coals, with black coffee, stewed dried apples, and soda biscuit made up what Mary found to be an unexpectedly palatable breakfast. As camp did not include a cow, no milk or butter was served with meals. Nevertheless, the hungry tenderfoot was quite content, and missed none of the appurtenances she had been brought up to believe essential to a civilized meal, not even the little silver jug that Aunt Martha always insisted came over with William the Conqueror—Aunt Martha scorned the _May-flower_ contingent as parvenus. The family sat on the grass, tailor fashion, and every one helped himself to what appetite prompted, in a fashion that suggested brilliant gymnastic powers. To pass a dish to any one, the governess discovered, was construed as an evidence of mental weakness and eccentricity. The family satisfied its appetite without assistance or amenities, but with the skill of a troupe of jugglers. Breakfast was half over when Mrs. Yellett laid down her knife, which she had handled throughout the meal with masterly efficiency. Mary watched her in hopeless embarrassment, and wondered if her own timid use of a tin fork could be construed as an unfriendly comment upon the Yelletts’ more simple and direct code of table etiquette. “Land’s sakes! I just felt, all the time we’ve been eating, we was forgettin’ something. You children ought to remember, I got so much on my mind.” All eyes turned anxiously to the cooking-stove, while an expression of frank regret began to settle over the different faces. The backbone of their appetites had been broken, and there was something else, perhaps something even more appetizing, to come. Interpreting the trend of their glance and expression, up flared Mrs. Yellett, with as great a show of indignation as if some one had set a match to her petticoats. “I declare, I never see such children; no more nacheral feelin’s than a herd of coyotes; never thinks of a plumb thing but grub. No, make no mistake about the character of the objec’ we’ve forgot. ’Tain’t sweet pertaters, ’tain’t molasses, ’tain’t corn-bread—it’s paw! It’s your pore old paw—him settin’ in the tent, forsook and neglected by his own children.” All started up to remedy their filial neglect without loss of time, but Mrs. Yellett waved them back to their places. “Don’t the whole posse of you go after him, like he’d done something and was to be apprehended. Ben, you go after your father.”