"Why—er—I don't know precisely. But you'd want to settle down and have a home some time, wouldn't you?"
"And cook for a man?" she put in. "Perhaps I haven't found the man."
Prime's laugh was boyishly blatant.
"I notice you are cooking pretty assiduously for a man these days. But perhaps that is only in self-defense. If the man cooked for you you wouldn't live very long."
"I am merely doing my bit, as the English say," was the cool retort. "I haven't said that I like to do it."
"But you do like to do it," he insisted. "If you didn't, you couldn't hit it off so cheerfully. I know a thing or two, and what I don't know I am learning. You are a perfectly normal woman, Lucetta, and normality doesn't mean continuous travel."
"You have changed your mind again. Last week you were calling me abnormal, and saying that you had never met a woman like me before."
"I hadn't; but that was my misfortune. I hope there are a good many like you; I've got to hope it for the sake of humanity and the good of the race. But this talk isn't getting us anywhere. We had better turn in; there is a hard day ahead of us tomorrow."
In the morning the prophecy seemed destined to fulfil itself in heaping measure. While Lucetta was getting breakfast Prime took to the woods and made a careful survey of some portion of the hazards ahead. He was gone for the better part of an hour, and when he came back his report was not encouraging.
"Worse and more of it," was the way he described the difficulties. "It is just one rapid after another, as far as I went; and that must have been a mile and a half or more. Coming back, I kept to the river bank, and tried to imagine us picking the way between the rocks in the channel. I believe we can do it if you have the nerve to try."