“Philip! How can you?” she cried.
“Washing,” he went on, “is only another error of civilization. I have seen whole tribes of most respectable aborigines that never bathed. And they seemed to be quite happy. It saves a lot of time. But that’s another queer thing. The more time we need, the more we waste it on matters that are really unimportant. Like most of our attempts to improve on nature, it costs more than it’s worth, and––”
“That will do, Philip!” she protested. “I can forget I’m hungry, but––ugh! not this!”
But she spoke too bravely about her hunger. Their food by this time had begun to pall. The good venison, of which they had eaten joyously at first, became tasteless and then disgusting. They had no salt. The bacon and the bread had long since been consumed, and the chocolate also. There was left nothing but the flesh of deer and rabbits. Marion stewed it, broiled it, 305 baked it under hot ashes; and they even nibbled at it raw; but the time came when only the relentless pangs of hunger, the hunger of the animal, the sheer clamor of their stomachs could force them to eat the nauseating food. In consequence of this revulsion, they were always hungry; and sometimes, in spite of their resolution, they descended to torturing each other with talk of the good things there were in the world to eat.
“Claire makes the most gorgeous apple dumplings!” said Marion on one of these occasions.
“Apple dumplings? Ye-es,” replied Haig judiciously. “But what about plain dumplings in chicken gravy?”
“Fricassee!” cried Marion.
“No. Maryland.”
“Still, Philip, if I had my choice it wouldn’t be chicken at all.”
“What then?”