“Oh! I hadn’t thought of that,” demurely. “I’ll try to be careful. Did you bring my shoe—and legging?”
He held them out for her inspection.
“You’d better not try to put them on—not to-night, anyway. To-morrow, perhaps——”
“To-morrow!” She looked up at him, and then at the frames of the lean-to, as though the thought that she must spend the night in the woods had for the first time occurred to her. A deep purple shadow was crawling slowly up from the eastward and only the very tops of the tallest trees above them were catching the warm light of the declining sun. The woods were dimmer now and distant trees which a moment ago had been visible were merged in shadow. Some of the birds, too, were beginning to trill their even-song.
“Yes,” he went on, “you see it’s getting late. There’s hardly a chance of any one finding us to-night. But we’re going to make out nicely. If you really insist on cleaning those fish——”
“I do—and on making some tea——”
“Then I must get the stuff for your bed before it’s too dark to see.”
He filled the saucepan with water at the stream, then turned back into the woods for the cedar twigs.
“The bed comes first,” he muttered to himself. “That’s what Joe would say. There’s caribou moss up on the slope and the balsam is handy. It isn’t going to rain to-night, but I’ll try to build a shelter anyway—boughs now—and canoe birches to-morrow, if I can find any. But I’ve got to hustle.”