Mrs. Caruthers looked now as if she were staring at a prodigy.
"Start at four o'clock! Where do you get breakfast? Don't you have breakfast? Will the people give you breakfast so early? Why, they would have to be up by two."
Tom was listening now. He could not help it.
"O, we have breakfast," Lois said. "We carry it with us, and we stop at some nice place and take rest on the rocks, or on a soft carpet of moss, when we have walked an hour or two. Mr. Dillwyn carries our breakfast in a little knapsack."
"Is it nice?" enquired the lady, with such an expression of doubt and scruple that the risible nerves of the others could not stand it, and there was a general burst of laughter.
"Come and try once," said Lois, "and you will see."
"If you do not like such fare," Philip went on, "you can almost always stop at a house and get breakfast."
"I could not eat dry food," said the lady; "and you do not drink wine.
What do you drink? Water?"
"Sometimes. Generally we manage to get milk. It is fresh and excellent."
"And without cups and saucers?" said the astonished lady. Lois's "ripple of laughter" sounded again softly.