Now please go mix some pancake dough!”
“All right,” called Sahwah cheerily. “You’ll soon smell something doughing!”
Nyoda and Gladys went home on an errand, and Hinpoha, worn out with her arduous labors with the needle, stretched out on the bearskin bed and fell sound asleep in the warmth of the fire. Sahwah puttered about collecting the ingredients for flapjacks to make a treat for the boys, who had worked like Trojans ever since school was out. The wood in the fireplace had burned down to lovely glowing embers, and she laid the toaster on top of them to act as a rest for the frying-pan. The Captain, tying ropes into the branches of the big tree just outside of the window, looked in and admired the scene. Hinpoha, with her marvellous red curls falling around her face in the light of the fire, looked like a sleeping princess in a fairy tale, and Sahwah, holding her dish of batter in one hand and skilfully putting grease into the pan with the other, was a cheery little housewife indeed. Through the half-open window he could hear her singing “A Warrior Bold.”
A moment he looked in, filled with whole-souled admiration for these many-sided girls who were his new friends, and then without warning something happened inside. The panful of sizzling fat suddenly burst into a sheet of flame that left the confines of the fireplace and seemed to leap all around Sahwah. A burning spark shot out and fell into a pile of cheesecloth lying on the floor at the far side of the room, and it blazed up instantly, the flames enveloping the sleeping Hinpoha. It took less than a moment for the Captain to spring down from the tree, run into the barn and up the ladder. But it was too late for him to do anything. In the twinkling of an eye Sahwah had seized the burning cheesecloth and flung it into the fireplace, thrown a bearskin rug over Hinpoha and now stood calmly pouring sand from a bucket on top of the burning fat in the pan. And all the while she was doing it she had never stopped singing! The Captain stood still in his amazement and listened idly to the words:
“So what care I, though death be nigh?
I’ll live for love or die——”
A hoarse sound made her turn around and she saw the Captain standing beside her with face pale as ashes. The dreadful sight he had seen from the tree when the room seemed filled with flame was still in his mind.
“How did you manage to keep so cool and do everything so quickly?” he asked in amazement.
Sahwah laughed at his expression of astonishment. “That’s not the first fire I’ve put out,” she said calmly. “We always keep both water and sand on hand whenever we have an open fire, to prevent serious accidents. Having the cheesecloth go up at the same time rather complicated matters, but I got it into the fireplace without any trouble. I don’t know what made the fat in the pan take fire; it’s never done that before up here. But don’t worry; I’ll get your flapjacks made, all right.”
The Captain looked at her with more admiration than ever. “Most girls would have been in a faint by that time, and have had to be doused with smelling salts,” he told the Sandwiches later, “instead of coolly promising you your flapjacks anyway and apologizing for the delay!”