"Not any more of the smoked venison, please!" she begged.
"No, it ought to be fresh meat of some sort. By and by, if the fever doesn't come back, I'll take the gun and see if I can't get a rabbit. I saw three yesterday morning while I was out chewing leaves. You won't be afraid to be left alone for a little while, will you?"
"After what we have been through, I think I shall never be afraid of anything again," she averred soberly. "And to think that I was once afraid of a mouse!"
"That is nothing," he laughed; "you probably will be afraid of a mouse again when you get back to an environment in which the mouse is properly an object of terror. I shan't think any the less of you if that does happen."
She smiled up at him.
"Men always talk so eloquently about the womanly woman: just what do they mean by that, Donald? Is it the mouse-coward?"
"It differs pretty widely with the man, I fancy," he returned. "I know my own ideal."
"She is the imaginary girl whose picture you are going to show me when we get out?"
He laughed happily. "You mustn't make me talk about that girl now, Lucetta. Some day I'll tell you all about her. Perhaps it is only fair to say that she is not so terribly imaginary as she might be."
"Of course not—if you have her picture," was the quiet reply; and a little while after that she told him she was sleepy again, and that he might take the gun and go after a rabbit if that was what he wished to do.