“Gosh, I get sick of this soup,” said Gin disconsolately in the kitchen, talking to the cook. “It’s worse when I have three trips to the same place in succession. Some day I’ll start bringing my own lunch.” She walked over to the window and watched the dudes disporting on the porch, fully fed and happy, teasing the rest-house puppy. Mr. Butts looked dour, however. He hadn’t been able to eat the apricot pie or the sandwiches because he was on a diet. “That fat one,” she told the cook, “is pretty bad.”
The cook looked over her shoulder and agreed heartily. “They all travel, that kind. Nobody will keep them at home. Have some more coffee?”
“No thanks. We’ll have to be starting. Well....” With a gesture of tightening her belt, she walked out to the porch. “Well, people, are we ready to go?”
“Where to?” asked Mr. Butts.
“Right up there.” She pointed to the stone-stepped hill behind the house, with the caves at the top of a long climb. Mr. Butts seemed to hesitate. “Curly’s going,” Gin added, nodding to the driver. “Aren’t you, Curly?”
“Sure thing. I’ll take care of you.”
Mrs. Jennings was the first to step forward. “All right; if Curly can make it, I can.”
Mr. Butts’ masculinity conquered, and he set out without further discussion. Blake had evidently gone on ahead; they could see him at the top with his hands in his pockets, looking around in a very pleased fashion all by himself.
There is a steep ladder at the top of the hill which leads from the slope to the flat summit. It sometimes causes a lot of trouble to people who have not caught their breath while they study the caves. Two of the ladies in Gin’s party looked at it fearfully and refused to climb it at all. They proposed to go down again to the rest-house, and said that they were satisfied with what they had seen. This feminine timidity spurred Mr. Butts to a genial teasing attitude. He laughed at the ladies; he taunted them; he essayed the ladder and found it easily conquered. From the top he persuaded them to be brave and come along. With pushing, pulling, lifting and pleading, they all managed to get there, and they gathered in a triumphant panting group about Gin, talking of mountain climbing in Switzerland and taking pictures of the ladder. She gathered her flock about her on the wind-swept summit and lectured on the glory that was Puye, waving to the piles of debris that once were houses and pointing out the dry water-hole. They walked the length of the village and peered into the excavations. They looked down upon the distant top of the rest-house. They stood up straight and breathed hard and gazed for miles over the tree-tops to the distant mountains, which did not look so high as they had before. Blake sauntered away and looked for bits of pottery. And Gin kept a wary eye on the red face of Mr. Butts.
“Yes, he’s slipping,” she told herself.