On this, Landlady Birch intervened, taking the bar-room in her way from the parlor to the kitchen.

“What is that you say, Frank?  The gentleman can have as good a breakfast here as he can have anywhere out of Boston, I’m sure, though I say it myself.  We don’t have so many to cook for, and so, perhaps, we take a little more pains, Sir,—­ha! ha!”

And with that good Mrs. Birch put on a graciousness of smile worthy of the most experienced female Boniface in Anglo-Saxondom.

“The gentleman don’t want any breakfast, mother; he only wants a ride round to Captain Grant’s, and he ha’n’t got the manners to ask for it, like a gentleman;—­he must have it.  I say he mus’n’t in my buggy, for I a’n’t goin’ that way.”

“Why, son, the gentleman of course expects to pay for it.”

“Yes, Madam,” said Chip, “I am willing and expect to bleed freely.”

Frank.  “Well, I should like to know what you mean by that? I don’t want your blood, or that of any other Boston squirt.”

Mrs. Birch (to Chip, after a reproving glance at Frank).  “I think we can accommodate you, Sir.  The buggy is at the blacksmith’s, and will be done in half-an-hour.  If you want, you can have breakfast while you are waiting; and you will find a comfortable fire in the parlor to sit by, at any rate.”

With this, Mrs. Birch made her exit, to hurry matters on the cook-stove.

“There! that’s her, all over!” grumbled Frank.  “If she can sell a meal of victuals, she don’t care what becomes of me.  But I’ll let her know the mare’s mine, and the buggy’s mine, all but the harness; and I tell you, Sir, I’ll see the mare drowned in Charles River and the buggy split into kindling-wood, before you shall have a ride to Captain Grant’s this day.”

“But here’s a five-dollar-bill,” quoth Chip, displaying a small handful of banknotes.

Frank.  “You may go to thunder with the whole of ’em!  I tell you I’ve set my foot down, and I won’t take it up for my own mother,—­and I’m sure I won’t for anything that ever was or will be under your clo’es.”

With this, he jerked up the harness and went off to the barn, with an air that convinced Chip that the controversy between mother and son was not likely to be decided in his favor at a sufficiently early hour to answer his purpose.  But where else should he go, or what else should he do?  As he was a little more inclined now to bet on calmness than on passion, he decided to take a seat in the parlor, and keep it, at least, till he could dispose of his present doubt.  Easily might he have measured three miles over the Waltham hills, in the bracing morning-air, with his own locomotive apparatus, while he had been looking in vain for artificial conveyance.  But if that plan had occurred to him at all at first, it would have been dismissed with contempt as unbusinesslike.  He must not, by any possibility, appear to Captain