When he reached the rock, it was characteristic of her that she said: "You came through those trees remarkably well."
He laughed. "I have an uncanny way of feeling things on my face before they touch me. I experimented somewhat with it in the laboratory at college. It's a sort of tropism, perhaps, such as bugs have, that enables them to keep between two planks or that turns plant-roots toward the sun. Anyway, I've brought some breakfast. These berries may be good, and these other things may be toadstools. I brought them along."
"How does one tell?" she asked.
"Oh, mushrooms are pink underneath and ribbed like a fan."
She examined them and said they might be mushrooms, they looked it. He sat down again, but not until he had replenished the fire.
"They may be poison, both of them," he hazarded. "That's our sporting chance. Will you try them?"
Claire took some of the berries and ate them. "I don't feel anything yet," she announced after a minute's solemn munching.
"Oh, you probably won't for several hours anyway," he said lightly. Then he continued: "If we could devise a way, we might heat water and cook the mushrooms. Then, too, I've been thinking we might even catch a bird."
"Neither sounds very simple."
"Nothing in life is simple," he replied. "At home, in America, where we leave food-getting to the farmer, dress from a store, and go to heaven by way of a minister, things are fairly well arranged, but here we aren't even sure of salvation unless we mind the business of thinking." He continued after a pause. "Of course, I don't especially remember that I counted on heaven. It always seemed a bit distant in the face of living and working. Perhaps, however, you counted it as vital."