"You're right, ma'am," Mrs. Quimby told her. "I ain't saying that some of it ain't real pretty worded, but that's just to hide the falsehood underneath. My land, the lies there is in that book! You don't need to know much about history to know that Jake Peters has made it over to fit his argument, and that he ain't made it over so well but what the old seams show here and there, and the place where the braid was is plain as daylight." After ten more minutes of bustle, Mrs. Quimby announced that they could sit down, and they were not slow to accept the invitation. The breakfast she served them moved Mr. Magee to remark: "I want to know where I stand as a judge of character. On the first night I saw Mrs. Quimby, without tasting a morsel of food cooked by her, I said she was the best cook in the county." The professor looked up from his griddle cakes. "Why limit it to the county?" he asked. "I should say you were too parsimonious in your judgment." Mrs. Quimby, detecting in the old man's words a compliment, flushed an even deeper red as she bent above the stove. Under the benign influence of the food and the woman's cheery personality, the spirits of the crowd rose. Baldpate Inn was in the past, its doors locked, its seven keys scattered through the dawn. Mrs. Quimby, as she continued to press food upon them, spoke with interest of the events that had come to pass at the inn. "It's so seldom anything really happens around here," she said, "I just been hungering for news of the strange goings-on up there. And I must say Quimby ain't been none too newsy on the subject. I threatened to come up and join in the proceedings myself, especially when I heard about the book-writing cook Providence had sent you." "You would have found us on the porch with outstretched arms," Mr. Magee assured her. It was on Kendrick that Mrs. Quimby showered her attentions, and when the group rose to seek the station, amid a consultation of watches that recalled the commuter who rises at dawn to play tag with a flippant train, Mr. Magee heard her say to the railroad man in a heartfelt aside: "I don't know as I can ever thank you enough, Mr. Kendrick, for putting new hope into Quimby. You'll never understand what it means, when you've given up, and your life seems all done and wasted, to hear that there's a chance left." "Won't I?" replied Kendrick warmly. "Mrs. Quimby, it will make me a very happy man to give your husband his chance." The first streaks of dawn were in the sky when the hermits of Baldpate filed through the gate into the road, waving good-by to Quimby and his wife, who stood in their dooryard for the farewell. Down through sleepy little Asquewan Falls they paraded, meeting here and there a tired man with a lunch basket in his hand, who stepped to one side and frankly stared while the odd procession passed.