“You're a crack camper for sure,” he declared. “Ah-h—does that steak look fit for the gods, or not? How's the coffee? Clear?”
“Perfect. And the steak looks as if it would melt in one's mouth. Oh, isn't this fun? How glad I am I'm here and not at that luncheon!” She consulted a tiny watch. “It's two o'clock—they're sitting down,” she exulted. “Martha has waited half an hour for me and given me up, and she's perfectly furious. I'm wicked enough to feel that that fact is going to make this meal taste all the better!”
“Stolen steak and bread and butter eaten in secret have an extra relish—no doubt of that. Here—this juicy bit is for you to begin on. Set your teeth into it, partner! How's that for food, I ask of you?”
Sitting on the ground opposite each other with the flat rock between, they consumed this Arcadian banquet, eating with the zest born of exertion and the open air, the sunshine and the comradeship.
“Nothing has tasted quite so good to me in a year,” said she when the steak had vanished, dipping a white celery-heart in salt and biting the end off with teeth still whiter.
“Nothing ever tasted so good to me,” said he, leaning on his elbow and spreading a crisp biscuit with a layer of cheese. “I always think that of each meal I eat in a place like this, but this one seems to have a special flavour. I wonder if it can be the company?”
He smiled across at her, the sunshine among the pine needles of the tree above him throwing flecks of bright copper among the thick locks of his hair.
“I think the company is usually an important part of all such outings,” she admitted frankly. “I never took one before in the society of a wornout doctor who began to look like a boy again before he had finished his coffee. I really shouldn't know you were the same person who invited me to go on this expedition.”
“There's nothing like it for renewing one, body and mind. Actual physical repose isn't often the best cure for weariness: it's change of thought and occupation, particularly if the open air is a part of the cure. I've forgotten I have a care in the world: all I can think of is—may I say it?—yourself! I can't get over the wonder of seeing you turn from what Bob calls his 'pretty lady' into the girl I see before me—a girl who looks about nineteen, with a capacity for good sport in the open air I never dreamed of.”
“The open air would renew everybody's youth, I think, if everybody would go to living out-of-doors. We're through, aren't we? There isn't a crumb left! Now please go off and let me clear up and pack away. That's always the woman's part. Couldn't you lie down on that inviting carpet of needles over there under the big pine and get a bit of sleep?”