A cloth had been laid at one end of the long stone table whereat, since the days of Abibaal, brother to Hiram, friend to David, kings had breakfasted and banqueted, and this cloth had now been set with the ancient plate of the palace--dishes that looked like helmets and urns and discs.

Here Olivia and Antoinette, in charming print frocks, made a kind of tea in a kind of biblical samovar and served it in vessels that resembled individual trophies of the course.

And here St.George and Amory praised the admirable English muffins which some one had taught the dubious cook to make; and Mr.Augustus Frothingham tip-fingered his way about his plate among alien fruits and queer-shaped cakes.

"Are they cookies or are they manna ?" Amory wondered, "for they remind me of coriander seeds." And here Mrs.
Hastings, who always awoke a thought impatient and became ultra-complacent with no interval of real sanity, wistfully asked for a soft-boiled egg and added plaintively: "Though I dare say the very hens in Yaque lay something besides eggs--pineapples, very likely." "I suppose," speculated Amory, "that when we get perfectly intuitionized we won't have to eat either one because we'll know beforehand exactly how they both taste." "A _reductio ad absurdum_, my young friend," said the lawyer sternly; "the real purpose of eating will remain for ever unchanged." Later, while Mrs.Hastings and Mr.Frothingham went out on the terrace in the sun and wished for a morning paper ("I miss the weather report so," complained Mrs.Hastings) the four young people with Jarvo and Akko for guides set out to explore the palace.

For St.George had risen from his two hours' sleep with some clearly-defined projects, and he meant first to go over every niche and corner of the great pile where one--say a king--might be hidden with twenty other kings, and no one be at all the wiser.
What a morning it was! When the rollicking wind got to that part of the story it must have told about it in such intimating perfumes that even the unimaginative were constrained to sit idle, "thinking delicate thoughts." There never was a fairer temple of romance, a very temple of Young Love's Plaisaunce; and since the coming of St.
George and Amory all the cavernous chambers and galleries were become homes of hope that the king would be found and all would yet be well.
To the main part of the palace there were storey after storey, all octagons and pentagons and labyrinths, so that incredulity and amazement might increase with every step.