At last I noticed that my silver motor clock was pointing to half-past two, and I realized that neither the chauffeur nor myself had had anything to eat since breakfast.  We were entering a tiny village.  Just beyond the main square a sign swinging above the sidewalk invited wayfarers to a “quick lunch.”  I pressed the button and we pulled to the gravel walk.

“Lunch!” I said, and opened the wire-netted door.  Inside there were half a dozen oilcloth-covered tables and a red-cheeked young woman was sewing in a corner.

“What have you got?” I asked, inspecting the layout.

“Tea, coffee, milk—­eggs any style you want,” she answered cheerily.  Then she laughed in a good-natured way.  “There’s a real hotel at Poughkeepsie—­five miles along,” she added.

“I don’t want a real hotel,” I replied.  “What are you laughing at?”

Then I realized that I must look rather civilized for a motorist.

“You don’t look as you’d care for eggs,” she said.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I retorted.  “I want three of the biggest, yellowest, roundest poached eggs your fattest hen ever laid—­and a schooner of milk.”

The girl vanished into the back of the shop and presently I could smell toast.  I discovered I was extremely hungry.  In about eight minutes she came back with a tray on which was a large glass of creamy milk and the triple eggs for which I had prayed.  They were spherical, white and wabbly.

“You’re a prize poacher,” I remarked, my spirits reviving.

She smiled appreciatively.

“Going far?” she inquired, sitting down quite at ease at one of the neighboring tables.

I looked pensively at her pleasant face across the eggs.

“That’s a question,” I answered.  “I can’t make out whether I’ve been moving on or just going round and round in a circle.”

She looked puzzled for an instant.  Then she said shrewdly: 

“Perhaps you’ve really been going back.”

“Perhaps,” I admitted.

I have never tasted anything quite so good as those eggs and that milk.  From where I sat I could look far up the Hudson; the wind from the river swayed the red maples round the door of the quick lunch; and from the kitchen came the homely smells of my lost youth.  I had a fleeting vision of the party at my house, now playing bridge for ten cents a point; and my soul lifted its head for the first time in weeks.

“How far is it to Pleasantdale?”

“A long way,” answered the girl; “but you can make a connection by trolley that will get you there in about two hours.”

“Suits me!” I said and stepped to the door.  “You can go, James; I’ll get myself home.”

He cast on me a scandalized look.

“Very good, sir!” he answered and touched his cap.

He must have thought me either a raving lunatic or an unabashed adventurer.  A moment more and the car disappeared in the direction of the city.  I was free!  The girl made no attempt to conceal her amusement.