She poured the coffee beans into an empty tomato-can and began to pound them with the end of the hammer handle, laughing at Wayland’s look of wonder and admiration. “Necessity sure is the mother of invention out here. How do you feel by now? Isn’t it nice to own a roof and four walls? I’m going to close up that window as soon as I get the coffee started. Are you warming up?”
“Oh yes, I’m all right now,” he replied; but he didn’t look it, and her own cheer was rather forced. He was in the grasp of a nervous chill, and she was deeply apprehensive of what the result of his exposure might be. It seemed as if the coffee would never come to a boil.
“I depend on that to brace you up,” she said.
After hanging a blanket over the broken window, she set out some cold meat and a half dozen baking-powder biscuits, which she found in the cupboard, and as soon as the coffee was ready she poured it for him; but she would not let him leave the fire. She brought his supper to him and sat beside him while he ate and drank.
“You must go right to bed,” she urged, as she studied his weary eyes. “You ought to sleep for twenty-four hours.”
The hot, strong coffee revived him physically and brought back a little of his courage, and he said: “I’m ashamed to be such a weakling.”
“Now hush,” she commanded. “It’s not your fault that you are weak. Now, while I am eating my supper you slip off your wet clothes and creep into Tony’s bunk, and I’ll fill one of these syrup-cans with hot water to put at your feet.”
It was of no use for him to protest against her further care. She insisted, and while she ate he meekly carried out her instructions, and from the delicious warmth and security of his bed watched her moving about the stove till the shadows of the room became one with the dusky figures of his sleep.
A moment later something falling on the floor woke him with a start, and, looking up, he found the sun shining, and Berrie confronting him with anxious face. “Did I waken you?” she asked. “I’m awfully sorry. I’m trying to be extra quiet. I dropped a pan. How do you feel this morning?”
He pondered this question a moment. “Is it to-morrow or the next week?”