“Not exactly—­yet,” admitted Abner, reluctantly.  “Come on—­let’s go to bed.  Mr. Claiborne asked us, and he’s the head of this household.  It isn’t anybody’s business what we came for.”

“I’ll slip off my shoes and lie down till Babe ties up the dog in the morning,” said Ross.  “Then we can get away before any of the family is up.”

Oh, youth—­youth—­youth, with its rash promises!  Worn out with misery the boys slept heavily.  The first sound that either heard in the morning was Babe hammering upon their bedroom door.  They crouched guiltily and looked into each other’s eyes.  “Let pretend we ain’t here and he’ll go away,” breathed Abner.

But Babe was made of sterner stuff.  He rattled the knob.  He turned it.  He put in a black face with a grin which divided it from ear to ear.  “Cady say I mus’ call dem fool boys to breakfus’,” he announced.  “I never named you-all dat.  Cady, she say dat.”

“Breakfast!” echoed Ross, in a daze.

“Yessuh, breakfus’,” reasserted Babe, coming entirely into the room and looking curiously about him.  “Ain’t you-all done been to bed at all?” wrapping his arms about his shoulders and shaking with silent ecstasies of mirth.  The boys threw themselves upon him and ejected him.

“Sent up a servant to call us to breakfast,” snarled Abner.  “If they’d only sent their old servant to the door in the first place, all this wouldn’t ‘a’ happened.  I’m just that way when I get thrown off the track.  You know how it was when I tried to repeat those things to you—­I had to go clear back to the beginning when I got interrupted.”

“Does that mean that you’re still hanging around here to begin over and make a call?” asked Ross, darkly.  “I won’t go down to breakfast if you are.”

Abner brightened a little as he saw Ross becoming wordy in his rage. 
“I dare you to walk downstairs and say,
’We-just-dropped-in-to-call-on-Miss-Champe’!” he said.

“I—­oh—­I—­darn it all! there goes the second bell.  We may as well trot down.”

“Don’t leave me, Ross,” pleaded the Jilton boy.  “I can’t stay here—­and I can’t go down.”

The tone was hysterical.  The boy with freckles took his companion by the arm without another word and marched him down the stairs.  “We may get a chance yet to call on Champe all by herself out on the porch or in the arbor before she goes to school,” he suggested, by way of putting some spine into the black-eyed boy.

An emphatic bell rang when they were half-way down the stairs.  Clutching their hats, they slunk into the dining-room.  Even Mr. Claiborne seemed to notice something unusual in their bearing as they settled into the chairs assigned to them, and asked them kindly if they had slept well.

It was plain that Aunt Missouri had been posting him as to her understanding of the intentions of these young men.  The state of affairs gave an electric hilarity to the atmosphere.  Babe travelled from the sideboard to the table, trembling like chocolate pudding.  Cady insisted on bringing in the cakes herself, and grinned as she whisked her starched blue skirts in and out of the dining-room.  A dimple even showed itself at the corners of pretty Alicia’s prim little mouth.  Champe giggled, till Ross heard Cady whisper: