"We want to see a '_Pardon_,'" Mrs. Gilbert announced at last, "and we've come to take you and your husband with us." It was the season of that famous Brittany festival, so Baedeker said, and they had seen some evidences of it in the little villages through which they had passed. Did Milly know of a good one? The Gilberts were as æsthetically lazy as they were weak in French, and of course quite helpless in Brittany, whose peasants seemed to them dirty baboons with a monkey language. Milly quickly recalled that some of the artists had been talking of the famous _Pardon_ at Poldau, a little fisher-settlement at the extreme tip of the western coast, where the costumes were said to be peculiarly rich and quaint. She had wanted to visit it with Jack, but he had become so much absorbed in his new picture that they had given up the idea. And there was Baby--she did not like to leave her. "Yvonne will do all right," her husband urged. "Better take the chance--I'll look after Virgie." So after much encouragement, though with misgivings, Milly consented to accompany the Gilberts in their car for a couple of days and show them the glories of the Brittany countryside. "I owe Nettie so much," she explained privately to her husband, by way of apology. "I can't very well refuse--and they are so helpless, poor dears!" "You'll have a bully time," he replied encouragingly. "Don't worry about anything. I'll watch Yvonne like a cat." "And telegraph me instantly if anything goes wrong." "Of course.... Don't hurry back if they should want you to go farther. It'll be good for you." "Oh, not more than two days--I couldn't." She did not give a thought to the Russian woman, or to anything but the baby. (Afterwards she became convinced that the whole plan had been arranged with skilful prescience by the wicked Baroness in order that she might have the artist to herself these few days....) * * * * * The departure in the freshness of the August morning was a great event. Every one in the hotel, including the _patron_ in his cook's white costume, the _patronne_, the grinning ape of a waiter, all the artists, and half the village gathered to watch the motor get under way. The lumbering ark of a car was laden with bags and trunks and bundles, for the Americans meant to be comfortable. Then Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert, their natural amplitude swollen by their dust-coats, goggles, and veils, mounted with stately complacency to their respective seats, and Milly tucked herself into a corner. Then the ratlike French chauffeur attempted to crank the engine, and perspiring, red in the face, spluttering with oaths, made many desperate efforts to arouse his monster. There were sympathetic murmurs from the audience. "Now he's got her--ah--oh--no! Hang to it Pierrot, etc." Finally Pierre exploded in a tragic _tirade_ to his employer, who sat stolidly through all the rumpus, merely asking at the end, "What's he saying, Milly?"