“You never would have thought that this place needed decorating, would you?” said Betty, as she set to work. “Certainly not. This rough roof offers a shelter; these harsh walls hide us from our enemies. So you, being a mere man, think it’s all right. Ha! I’d hate to be a mere man.”
She was flying about the cave, fastening branches in the clefts of the rock, stepping back to view the results, altering her arrangements, apparently so lost in her work as to have forgotten our true situation.
“Now hand me that birch branch—the white contrasts beautifully with the green pine; now another piece of pine, now some more birch. There. That’s what you call repetition of color, isn’t it? You don’t know? Gracious. How can men be so ignorant of the really important things of life!”
On the rock forming the roof of the cave we found a patch of moss, velvet soft to the touch, and a gentle brown and gold in color. With a stick I loosened great pieces from the rock and bore it carefully within where Betty directed the carpeting of the cave. When a large piece reached its destination intact Betty beamed; when the moss broke between my outstretched hands she pouted.
“I think so long as Nature goes to the trouble of creating a carpet for us it might as well do a good job and make it strong enough to stand transportation.”
But when the cave was carpeted with its soft, yielding cushion of moss she clapped her hands in delight.
“Look at it!” she cried, embracing the cave with a gesture. “Why, it’s cozy; people could almost live here.”
Our coming and going had trodden down much of the brush which had so thoroughly hidden the cave, and with some of the branches left over from Betty’s decorations I proceeded to weave a screen over the opening. When I had completed it I crawled out and inspected my work from a distance. The cave now was hidden more thoroughly than ever. Brack must look long and carefully to find us.
When I slipped back into our shelter I surprised Betty sitting on the canoe with her head bowed upon her hands in an attitude of dejection. She looked up, smiling bravely, but her cheerfulness was only surface-deep.
I looked away without a word, as did she, but in that moment we had confessed to one another that our display of high spirits had merely been acting, each wishing to help bolster up the courage of the other. We sat so for some time. Betty finally broke the silence.