And he told her all about the baby, and what an unusually smart baby it was—really all but walking and talking, one would swear, to hear the excited man rave! Flora laughed till there were tears in her eyes; and she said she “certainly must see the remarkable baby, which you say has become your ‘mascot’, though I don’t really see how a baby quite so young could have teeth almost ready to break through!”
Then all at once it began to dawn on them that they didn’t know in the least where they were driving to. They looked at each other and laughed. And then they grew momentarily rather solemn over a freely acknowledged state of famishment. But scarcely had the wheels revolved a score of times when they beheld—it was just like a page out of some fairy tale!—a delightful house all overrun with crimson ramblers, and out near the road a neat sign which said:
MRS. GILFILLAN: PRIVATE BOARD.
“Whoa!” cried the driver, obedient to an exultant shout from the impresario.
“But do you think they would take us in, just for lunch?” asked Flora. “For you see it isn’t really a hotel.”
“I know,” replied Mr. Curry confidently, “but it’s a canny Scotch name, and I don’t think she’ll send us starving from her door.”
And sure enough, she didn’t. Mrs. Gilfillan turned out to be very corpulent, very Victorian, and very canny. She took them right in, and they sat together at one end of a long table, with all the fortunate private boarders; and there was a genuine revolving pepper, salt, vinegar, and oil “caster” in the centre of the table; and they ate preserves out of tiny saucers of red glass with white scroll-work etched around the rims.
Mr. Curry leaned over and said in a low voice: “Did you ever dream of finding a place like this in the Philippines?” And Flora leaned over and replied, in her rich way: “Isn’t it the most absurd and delightful place you ever heard of?”
The driver had his luncheon too, elsewhere on the premises, and when the romantic couple emerged on to the porch they found that he had piled Mr. Curry’s bags beside the front door.