"How could she be fond of walking when there's no place to walk?" Bates spoke roughly. "Besides, she has too much work to do."
"Ever lost her before?"
"No," said Bates. It would have been perfectly unbearable to his pride that these strangers should guess his real uneasiness or its cause, so he talked as if the fact of the girl's long absence was not in any way remarkable.
Having mixed a batter the American sliced pork fat into the hot pan and was instantly obscured from view by the smoke thereof. In a minute his face appeared above it like the face of a genius.
"You will observe, gentlemen," he cried without bashfulness, "that I now perform the eminently interesting operation of dropping cakes—one, two, three. May the intelligent young lady return to eat them!"
No one laughed, but his companions smiled patiently at his antics—a patience born of sitting in a very hot, steamy room after weeks in the open air.
"You are a cook," remarked Bates.
The youth bent his long body towards him at a sudden angle. "Born a cook—dentist by profession—by choice a vagabond."
"Dentist?" said Bates curiously.
"At your service, sir."