For answer he went to the boat and brought back two small mackerel, well cleaned, then he made a fire, fastened the fish to a board and set them up to cook.
"It is a real Robinson Crusoe feast," declared Gwen, "for we have neither forks nor spoons. I shouldn't care to be so primitive in everyone's company, but I don't mind a bit with you. How good that fish looks. Is it ready? That's fine. We might make chop sticks out of twigs; Aunt Cam showed me how to use them, but I reckon fingers were made even before chop sticks." She was very gay and bright as she laughed and talked over the meal. Somehow she felt as if a great weight of responsibility had been lifted from her.
"No dishes to wash this time," said Mr. Williams as the last morsel disappeared.
"Not one; that is a great consideration. Perhaps, after all, one might get along in some such way as this. I'll tell you what I shall do: when I get utterly tired out from kindergartnering, I'll come up here and stay the year 'round, then we can go off and have feasts like this very, very often."
"That is quite a pleasant prospect. I quite approve of it, though it ought to be a long way off, for you must not waste your youth by giving up the things that only the outside world can furnish."
"The outside world doesn't furnish me with such a vast amount. Oh, I am not unhappy nor discontented, I am really a very fortunate girl, only there are times when a long vista of kindergarten teaching becomes rather oppressive, and if Aunt Cam should take it into her head to go back to China, I'd have to go with her or be left high and dry here unless—I did marry. I wonder if I ought to have more faith, Daddy Lu."
"In persons or things?"
"In a person. Ought I to think that genius will burn fiercely enough to keep up a furnace as well as a kitchen fire? You know the old nursery rhyme that says:
"'Will the love that you're so rich in,
Build a fire in the kitchen,