“Dear me,” she exclaimed, “why doesn’t somebody repeat, ‘Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise.’ I seem to scent coffee in the air. Chief cook and bottle washer, what have you got for breakfast?”
“Corn bread from Minnie’s corn meal,” replied Nancy, who answered to this title, “and shirred eggs, the last in our storehouse, and chopped beef——”
“You lavish and wasteful young persons,” she cried. “How do you know we won’t need some of these things before we get back to civilization?”
“There are still baked beans,” said Nancy reproachfully. Nancy was a born cook, and, like other born cooks, she was only amiable when she was not interfered with.
“Go out and look at the scenery,” she continued, “and leave us in peace. We won’t starve. There’s a box of wheaten biscuit left.”
“I’d just as soon eat a bale of hay,” cried Billie contemptuously. “And there’s the Comet. He has to be fed this morning. How do I know that our provisions will last? If the food fails and the gasoline likewise, ‘et puis bon jour,’ as the song says.”
But Billie wasn’t really apprehensive. The day was too fine and her spirits too high.
“The truth is, we are all like the angels in heaven rejoicing over one sinner repented,” said Mary in a low voice, for Minnie could be seen approaching with a pail of water from the spring.
Toilets are meagre affairs in a cabin in the Rocky Mountains, and in a quarter of an hour Billie was fully clothed, washed and combed. Mary had closed the door of the cabin while she dressed.