Stewart sat up and rubbed his eyes and looked at her again. Her hair was neatly combed, her face was fresh and shining, her hands showed some ugly scratches but were scrupulously clean. Even her clothing, though torn here and there, had evidently been carefully brushed.
“What astounds me,” said Stewart, deliberately, “is how you do it. You spend the first half of the night scrambling over rocks and through briars, and the second half sleeping on the bare ground, and you emerge in the morning as fresh and radiant as though you had just stepped from your boudoir. I wish I knew the secret.”
“Come and I will show you,” she said, laughing gayly, and she led him away into the wood.
Presently he heard the sound of falling water, and his guide brought him triumphantly to a brook gurgling over mossy rocks, at whose foot was a shallow basin.
“There is my boudoir,” she said. “The secret of beauty is in the bath. I will reconnoiter the neighborhood while you try it for yourself.”
Stewart flung off his clothes, splashed joyously into the cold, clear water, and had perhaps the most delicious bath of his life. There was no soap, to be sure, but much may be done by persistent rubbing; and there were no towels, but the warm wind of the morning made them almost unnecessary. He got back into his clothes again with a sense of astonishing well-being—except for a most persistent gnawing at his stomach.
“I wonder where we shall breakfast to-day?” he mused as he laced his shoes. “Nowhere, most probably! Oh, well, if that dear girl can stand it, I oughtn’t to complain!”
And he fell to thinking of her, of her slim grace, of the curve of her red lips——
“Confound it!” he said. “I can’t stand it much longer. Friendship is all very well, and the big brother act may do for a while—but I can’t keep it up forever, and what’s more, I won’t!”
And then he heard her calling, in the clear, high voice he had grown to love.