“We were sights, too,” said Nan.
“Oh, but such sensible sights, so well equipped for a mountain climb. I felt like a very Pariah in your midst I didn’t wonder that you fled from us.”
Nan remembered why they had fled but did not think it necessary to inform him.
“So you see,” continued Mr. Wells, “we are really old acquaintances, and altogether it is quite a heaven-arranged meeting. Don’t you think I might call at your camp and ask your mother to allow Miss Jack to sit for me in this costume? I haven’t dared to mention it before, but I am wild to do a sketch of her, and I am sure your Dr. Paul will vouch for me.”
“I don’t know what mother will say, but it would do no harm to ask, I think,” Nan replied after reflection. “And now we must surely be going. Mother will be worried. She knows we do range off pretty much as we choose, but this time as Jack was not with any of us she will not be satisfied till she sees her. Thank you for letting us see your sketches. My canoe is just below here.”
So she and Jack made their adieux and were soon paddling back to camp. “That was an adventure, sure enough,” declared Nan as they neared the end of the journey, “but you mustn’t go off alone even to hunt mascots, Jack. Something dreadful might have happened. Suppose there had been no cabin in the woods and you had been there alone when night came.”
“But I shouldn’t have been, for after a while I would have discovered that I was going wrong. I should have known it as soon as the sun began to get over the mountains. I know the west should be on my right when I go south toward camp.”
“But all the same you might have lost your way before dark.”
But Jack was not to be convinced. “At all events,” she said, “I should have found the Indian’s tent and his wife would have taken me in for the night.”
“You don’t consider the state of mind we all would have been in when night came,” Nan told her.