We therefore stopped and chose a new place on the side nearer her spring, and that being settled—a most important selection, we pretended it to be—she looked up at me, crying happily:
"After luncheon I'll come and help you build it!—and then you'll cut a path straight from my tent to yours so, should there be any danger, I can run to you without stumbling!"
For another moment, with eyes closed, I visualized my new decoration.
Luncheon, I thought, was even an improvement over breakfast. Nor did I take so long to wash the dishes afterwards.
CHAPTER XX
SLEEPING BENEATH GOD'S TENT
That afternoon we built the lean-to. I had had some fair ideas about building a lean-to, but Doloria was in possession of a practical knowledge gathered on camping trips that she and Echochee had made—for these, I judged, constituted one of her chief recreations since childhood. She knew how to twist ropes of bark for tying the poles, and how to interlay the palm fronds so they would neither leak nor be lifted by the wind. She took the keenest pleasure in it, too, and I can safely say that never in my life have I enjoyed building anything as much as that lean-to. When it was finished I stepped back and, in a burst of admiration, cried:
"It's a palace? I can't ever get along without you!"