“In my br-reast pocket, yes.” It was a feebly appreciative flicker.
“A fire! I–I a Camp Fire Girl–and not to think of it sooner! Una! Una! Get busy! Gather wood, quickly–quickly–all-ll the dry wood you can!”
And the friendly little cedar gave of its one brown arm, the spruce chit, the birch stripling, the pine urchin–all the hop-o’-my-thumb timber that flourished in this wild pass–contributed of the dead limbs torn from them by last winter’s blasts, to burn up the chill in the old Man Killer’s heart.
Una’s little nose, piquantly tiptilted, warmed from a fashionable orchid-color to a cheery rose pink, with the excitement, the pressing adventure of trailing firewood among the rocks and dragging it captive to the new-born blaze which Pem was fanning with her breath and with the breezy bellows of her short green skirt.
As for the sufferer, hope stirred anew in him as he turned his head towards the flaming pennons of good cheer, while the fire, prospering gayly, feathered its nest with scarlet down.
He saw, too, that the fire-witch was preparing something in that red nest for him.
Raking out the first glowing embers, she filled her little aluminum cup at the rill and set it among them; when it steamed she shook into it a few drops from the little vial–the aromatic spirits of ammonia–and held it to his lips.
“It’s the best I can do,” she murmured, but her eyes stretched that best into an indefinite blue of longing to capture the pain even for a short time and bear it for him–for him who was making the Thunder Bird’s fortune.
As before, the stimulant set the racked heart to sending strength through the freezing veins–and with it a touch of the whimsicality which Death alone could quench.
“Little girl!” Treffrey Graham’s eye winked upon a mote of fun that softened to a mist. “Your fa-ther’s invention is the gr-reatest thing yet; it’s a Success–I know that from the one glimpse I had at the record–” Pemrose winced–“but–but you may tell him from me that I doubt if, after all, his Thunder Bird is the best thing he’s turned out.”