“What do you suppose my tongue is—a timekeeper?” cried the irreverent Bobby.
Laura herself helped get dinner, the main dish of which was fried fish. And how good they tasted, fresh out of the lake! 109
Mrs. Morse had kept her typewriter tapping at a swift pace in the cabin, and she could scarcely be coaxed to leave her story long enough to eat dinner.
“This quietude is an incentive to good work,” she said, reflectively, at table. “I shall be sorry to go back to town.”
But it was very early in their experience to say that. Lizzie Bean was not yet an enthusiast for the simple life, that was sure. She and Mother Wit had gotten better acquainted during the preparations for the noonday meal.
“I ain’t never been crazy about the country myself,” admitted Liz. “Cows, and bugs, and muskeeters, and frogs, don’t seem so int’restin’ to me as steam cars, and pitcher shows, and sody-water fountains, and street pianners.
“I like the crowds, I do. A place where all ye hear all day is a mowin’ merchine clackin’, or see a hoss switchin’ his tail to keep off the bluebottles, didn’t never coax me, much.”
“The bucolic life does not tempt you, then?” said Laura, her eyes twinkling.
“Never heard it called that afore. Colic’s it serious thing—’specially with babies. But the city suits me, I can tell ye,” said Liz.
“I never seen no-one that liked the woods like you gals seem to before, ’ceptin’ a feller that lived 110 in the boardin’ house I worked at in Albany. He was a bug on campin’ and fishin’ and gunnin’, and all that.”