So Baldpate Inn dropped back into the silence to slumber and to wait. To wait for the magic of muslin, the lilt of waltzes, the tinkle of laughter, the rhythm of the rockers of the fleet on its verandas, the formal tread of the admiral's boots across its polished floors, the clink of dimes in the pockets of its bell-boys. For a few brief hours strange figures had replaced the unromantic Quimby in its rooms, they had come to talk of money and of love, to plot and scheme, and as they came in the dark and moved most swiftly in the dark, so in the dark they went away, and Baldpate's startling winter drama took reluctantly its final curtain. Down the snowy road the five followed Quimby's lead; Mr. Magee picturing in fancy one who had fled along this path but a short time before; the others busy with many thoughts, not the least of which was of Mrs. Quimby's breakfast. At the door of the kitchen she met them, maternal, concerned, eager to pamper and to serve, just as Mr. Magee remembered her on that night that now seemed so long ago. He smiled down into her eyes, and he had an engaging smile, even at four-thirty in the morning. "Well, Mrs. Quimby," he cried, "here is the prodigal straight from that old husk of an inn. And believe me, he's pretty anxious to sit down to some food that woman, starter of all the trouble since the world began, had a hand in." "Come right in, all of you," chirruped Mrs. Quimby, ushering them into a pleasant odor of cookery. "Take off your things and sit down. Breakfast's most ready. My land, I guess you must be pretty nigh starved to death. Quimby told me who was cooking for you, and I says to Quimby: 'What,' I says, 'that no account woman-hater messing round at a woman's job, like that,' I says. 'Heaven pity the people at the inn,' I says. 'Mr. Peters may be able to amuse them with stories of how Cleopatra whiled away the quiet Egyptian evenings,' I says, 'and he may be able to throw a little new light on Helen of Troy, who would object to having it thrown if she was alive and the lady I think her, but,' I says, 'when it comes to cooking, I guess he stands about where you do, Quimby.' You see, Quimby's repertory consists of coffee and soup, and sometimes it's hard to tell which he means for which." "So Mr. Peters has taken you in on the secret of the book he is writing against your sex?" remarked Billy Magee. "Not exactly that," Mrs. Quimby answered, brushing back a wisp of gray hair, "but he's discussed it in my presence, ignoring me at the time. You see, he comes down here and reads his latest chapters to Quimby o' nights, and I've caught quite a lot of it on my way between the cook-stove and the sink." "I ain't no judge of books," remarked Mrs. Norton from a comfortable rocking-chair, "but I'll bet that one's the limit."