They had left no servants in charge, and neighbors there were none to restrain the attacks of marauders, and they were prize leghorns, too. She almost wailed. What a shame! Well might all bachelors who are threatened with a wintry solitude take warning by unhappy Peter. But he is not without the honor due to martyrdom--is Peter, for Mrs. Sanborn had him stuffed, and presented him to "Fanny," who took him to California, where he survived the great San Francisco earthquake. "He must have been our mascot," said Lloyd Osbourne to me long after, "for the fire that followed the earthquake came just as far as the gate and no farther." Since the cup that cheers is not customary in Quaker homes our hostess proposed an egg-nog by way of afternoon collation and all entered with zest into the mixing of the decoction. One brought the eggs, another the sugar-bowl, while our host went to the cellar for that brand of John Barleycorn that transmutes every beverage to a toast. Now, while Stevenson came to regard new-laid eggs as the natural manna of the desert, he had his doubts as to the feasibility of egg-nog, seeing that milk is a necessary constituent. He did not know, you see, that a little White Alderney cow was chewing the end of salt-meadow grasses in the woods nearby, and, even as he doubted, Mrs. Sanborn and her Ganymedes had brought in a jug of the white fluid, topped with a froth like sea-foam. "It's nectar for the gods on Olympus," said I--meaning the milk. "True Ambrosia of the meadows," agreed Mrs. Sanborn. "Well, this is Elysium, and _we_ are the gods to-day." Elysium-on-Manasquan. "To be more exact," said Stevenson, "it should be Argos; it was there they celebrated the cow, as we are now celebrating----" "Tidy," said Mrs. Sanborn. "Io," corrected Stevenson, waving his fork, for he, too, was helping to beat the eggs: "Argos-on-Manasquan." He lingered over the name Manasquan as though he enjoyed saying it. "The first thing that impressed me in travelling in America," said he, "was your Indian names for towns and rivers. Temiscami, Coghnawaga, Ticonderoga, the very sound of them thrills one with romantic fancies. Why do you not revive more of these charming Indian names?" "We are too young yet to appreciate our legendary wealth," said Mr. Sanborn, with an emphasis on the "legendary." "_Qui s'excuse, s'accuse_," reminded Mrs. Low, who was a French woman. "Quite right," assented Mr. Sanborn, "it is not precedent we lack, but valuations." "To return to Argos," said Mrs. Sanborn--the peace-maker--"I always feel in the presence of a divine mystery when I milk Tidy. No one could be guilty of a frivolous thing before the calm eye of that little cow."