"Till she says go," he added, "we've got to stay."

"Oh yes," his wife responded. "The worst of it is, we can't even go back
to Tuskingum." He looked up suddenly at her, and she saw that he had not
thought of this. She made "Tchk!" in sheer amaze at him.

"We won't cross that river till we come to it," he said, sullenly, but
half-ashamed. The next morning the situation had not changed overnight,
as they somehow both crazily hoped it might, and at breakfast, which they
had at a table grown more remote from others with the thinning out of the
winter guests of the hotel, the father and mother sat down alone in
silence which was scarcely broken till Lottie and Boyne joined them.

"Where's Ellen?" the boy demanded.

"She's having her breakfast in her room," Mrs. Kenton answered.

"She says she don't want to eat anything," Lottie reported. "She made
the man take it away again."

The gloom deepened in the faces of the father and mother, but neither
spoke, and Boyne resumed the word again in a tone of philosophic
speculation. "I don't see how I'm going to get along, with those
European breakfasts. They say you can't get anything but cold meat or
eggs; and generally they don't expect to give you anything but bread and
butter with your coffee. I don't think that's the way to start the day,
do you, poppa?"

Kenton seemed not to have heard, for he went on silently eating, and the