"Now, I want you girls to take a look at the temperature of these tubes—they are the same as the temperature of a normal human stomach."
The girls obeyed and Miss Miller then placed the tubes inside a Thermos bottle to keep them at an even temperature until the time required for the digestion to take place.
Miss Miller took charge of the Thermos bottle while the girls took the remainder of the dinner back to the Bluff.
The cake had been placed inside the cupboard and soon Wickee scented it. He immediately took up his station directly in front of the doors and started howling, with an intermittent sniff at the crack in the cupboard door.
"Hey, there, Wick! Dogs' stomachs were not built for cake any more than ours were made to hold alcohol! You can't have any of that cake until we see what effect that stuff has on the egg!" called Zan.
The wise dog looked at his mistress out of the corners of his eyes, and then, creeping away from the cupboard, he quietly left the Bluff and stretched out upon the moss under the willow by the pool.
Miss Miller had gone to her tent to place the Thermos bottle in her box and was just coming out when Nita came from her tent. A pink flush over-spread her face when she saw the Guide so near, and a letter was hastily hidden in the folds of her tunic.
"I was just going down to the mail-box with a note to mother," stuttered Nita, seeing that the letter was seen.
Miss Miller made no reply but walked to the edge of the Bluff with the girl and stood there watching her hurry down the slope. At the lilac bushes that grew near Sherwoods' kitchen door, she saw Nita stop suddenly and look down at the ground. She stooped and picked up a letter—whether it was the one she carried and had dropped accidentally, or another one she had just found, the Guide could not tell.
Nita looked up at the Bluff, saw Miss Miller still watching her, and ran past the house, out of sight.