"You shall have one fit for a queen. Order what you like, and I shall place it before you."
"You are, then, the Genie of the Ring?" retorted Meg, laughing; "but I think I can place you at a disadvantage. Suppose I call for champagne and oysters?"
"Oh, come, now, you must be reasonable. Though, indeed," added Dan, with a sudden remembrance of his cellar, "I can supply you with champagne. Oysters I have not--not even tinned ones."
"No, no!" cried Meg, as he advanced towards the caravan. "Please do not trouble. I was only joking. I never tasted champagne in my life."
"All the more reason that you should begin now."
"Genie of the Ring," said Meg, gaily, "come back! I forbid you to give me anything stronger than tea. I shall have tea and bread-and-butter and jam."
"What kind of jam?" asked Dan, laughing.
"I like strawberry best."
"Good! I can provide you with that. We will have afternoon-tea, Meg, after the fashion of high society."
But no society tea could have been as pleasant as that meal in the open air beside the wood fire. The dell was filled with golden sunshine, and the blue sky arched itself like a hollow sapphire over the green trees. A gentle wind whispered through the leaves, and the drowsy voice of the distant sea boomed like the solemn notes of an organ. Singing birds were in the pine wood, swallows darted through the sky, and bees and grasshoppers and humming wasps made the dell vocal with murmurous sound. Dan counted that day as one of the most perfect of his life; one to be marked with a white stone.