"But it'll blow right toward their camp! The wind's changed since yesterday!"
"That's more than two miles off, and they're probably still after Smilax. I'll make a very small fire."
This, indeed, seemed to work well enough, and by the time a new breakfast was ready our uncertainties had become shadows of no consequence.
"But you do know I was angry, don't you?" she asked, out of a clear sky, with an unexpectedness that made me throw back my head and laugh.
"You bet I do! And you beat me in the race, too; and you're the best cook on our block!"
"It seems to be the same old story," she smiled, with affected sorrow, "that food must always be the price of masculine tractability. Ah, the long drawn out tragedy of woman's existence, that she must forever be stuffing man with things to eat, as reptiles are stuffed, to keep him facile!"
"You fail to observe, my little snake charmer," I replied, "that you omitted to say good things to eat. I'm never facile after Smilax feeds me."—Though I owe Smilax an apology for this!
"He must have run great risks of being bitten."
"Oh, no; I'm not the biting kind of snake! I'm a constrictor—I hug!"
"Mercy!" She gave a little gasp, then, turned and went indifferently toward the spring.