“Why, aren’t you going on that infernal picnic?” I asked.
“No; I’ll have all the picnic I want over here. Like Ptolemy I feel that I want to play with some of my own kind.”
Beth looked at him approvingly; then she said a little sarcastically:
“Maybe you’ll change your mind––about going on the picnic, I mean––when you see the new girl who just came to the hotel on the morning stage. She’s a blonde, and not peroxided, either.”
“That would certainly drive him down here, or anywhere,” I laughed.
“Oh, don’t you like blondes?” she asked innocently.
“He doesn’t like––” I began, but Ptolemy rudely interrupted with an elaborate description of a new kind of fishing tackle he had bought.
Then Beth bade Pythagoras build a fire 151 in the cook-stove while she set the room to rights.
“We’ll eat out of doors,” she said, “I think it would be more appetizing.”