He stood smiling down upon her with his hands in his pockets.
"Your trust is the most wonderful thing in this world, Lucetta—and the most beautiful. I should have to be a much worse man than I have ever dared to be to do anything to spoil it," he said slowly, and with that he went to set up her sleeping-tent.
XIII
AT CAMP COUSIN
Prime whittled through the better part of the succeeding forenoon on the paddles, and for the midday bread Lucetta tried her domestic-science hand upon the dried and reground flour. Not to draw too fine a comparison, the paddles were the better success, though the bread was eatable. In the afternoon the man of all work, with Lucetta for consulting engineer, tackled the broken canoe.
There was no lack of materials with which to make the repairs if they had only known how to use them. Attempts to sew a patch of birch bark over the hole with threads drawn from the blanket were dismal failures. At each of the thread punctures the patch would split and curl up most perversely; and when night came they had succeeded only in making a bad matter slightly worse.
After supper they put their heads together to become, if the oracles should prove auspicious, inventors in this hitherto untried field.
"If we only had a few drops of Indian blood in us!" Prime complained. "What do you suppose they daub this bark thing with to make it water-tight? It must be something they find in the woods."