"You like it, Sally?" he asked, taking a position where the moonlight did not illumine his face.
"Like it!" she exclaimed. "Jo says we're to stay if you are willing—live in this tent, and have the others out, and Mary Ann Flinders! We won't need Mary Ann long. I'll be strong enough myself to cook in another week. Oh, wasn't it dear and kind of these people to plan this for us?"
What could he do or say against it all without seeming a churl and an ingrate? But before he could formulate the inwardly grudging yet outwardly appreciative reply he felt forced to make, Jarvis himself had interposed with a flow of lively talk, explaining to Sally various details of arrangement, and sparing Max the necessity of making any insincere speeches. And the next thing that happened was the setting forth by Josephine, on the table in the tent's outer room, of a light but tempting supper, brought from home in a hamper—the product of no Mary Ann Flinders, but of the Burnside cook.
"Mm—mm!" The soft but eloquent sound came from Sally's closed lips when she had taken her first taste of a sandwich of unknown but delicious compound. "Was ever anything so good? Max, boy, please try one, quick! What is this perfect drink, Joey?—how it does go to the spot! Oh, if you are all half as happy as Sally Lunn, you don't know how to express it!"
"We're even happier," said Josephine, laughing softly, "for it seems at last as if we have Sally Lunn back."
Jarvis had hard work to keep his own pleasure properly subdued. He sat just across the table from Max, and the light from two candles shone revealingly into his satisfied face. He put on his goggles to screen his eyes, hoping that they might assist in concealing his content. Until Max gave in and agreed to it all, it would never do to let anybody but Sally crow with delight.
Mrs. Burnside insisted on an early bedtime for Sally, and the convalescent reluctantly admitted that not even joy was wholly sustaining to such weakness of limb as was still hers. So she submitted, with a sigh of appreciation, to being tucked away in the bed in the southeast enclosure of the tent, and soon was lying peacefully there, watching through her open tent-flap the moonlight as it lay on the open lawn, beyond the vista of trees. The air was now stirring refreshingly through the grove, and Sally, under the thinnest of light summer blankets, was absolutely comfortable and restful, as she had not been for many weary nights.
In the adjoining room, Max was asleep in two minutes after he had stretched himself upon his cot. Outside, by the embers of the camp fire, Jarvis and Josephine exchanged a brief conversation.
"Is he taking it worse or better than you expected?" Josephine asked, in the lowest of whispers.
"He took it like the bumptious idiot he can be, at first. He's a trifle calmer now. I'm hoping by morning he'll be reasonable."