She felt guilty to the last degree. What would they say at the office to a young woman who took naps in the morning?
And then the blessed memory that there was no reason why she shouldn't do exactly as she pleased with her time, so long as the dishes were done after awhile, came to her.
"There's no clock in the forest," she thought, smiling drowsily; and lay serenely on the pine-needles for another half hour.
When she did go in, the quantity of dishes wasn't so terrific. There had been no courses. Each man had left behind him an entirely empty plate and mug and knife and fork; that was all. And Marjorie seemed to have more energy and delight in running about and doing things than she had ever known she possessed, in the heavy New York air. She washed the dishes and swept out the cabin with a gay good will that surprised herself. She tried to feel like Cinderella or Bluebeard's wife or some of the oppressed heroines who had loomed large in her past, but it wasn't to be done. After that she was so hungry—her own breakfast had been taken in bites, on the run—that she ate up all the remaining biscuits, after toasting them and making herself bacon sandwiches as she had for the men; quite forgetting that her own abode lay near, filled to repletion with stores of a quite superior kind. The bacon sandwiches and warmed-over coffee tasted better than anything she had ever eaten in her life.
And then there was a whole long afternoon ahead of her, before she had to do a solitary thing for the men's supper!
"I must have 'faculty'!" said Marjorie to herself proudly, thinking more highly of her own talents than she ever had before. The fact that as a filing-clerk she had not shone had made her rather meek about her own capacities. She had always taken it impudently for granted that she was attractive, because the fact had been, so to speak, forced on her. But there had been a very humble-minded feeling about her incapacity for a business life. Miss Kaplan, for instance, she of the exuberant emotions and shaky English, had a record for accuracy and speed in her particular line which was unsullied by a single lapse. And Lucille, lazy, luxury-loving Lucille, concealed behind her fluffinesses an undoubted and remorseless executive ability. Compared to them Marjorie had always felt herself a most useless person. That was why she always was meeker in office hours than out of them. And to find herself swinging this work, even for one meal, without a feeling of incapacity and unworthiness, made her very cheered indeed. The truth was, she was doing a thing she had a talent for.
"And I'm not tired!" she marveled. The change of air was responsible for that, of course.
She went back to her forgotten cabin, singing beneath her breath. It had a rather tousled air, but in her new enthusiasm she went through it like a whirlwind. She attacked her own room first, and created spotless order in it. Then she went at the living-room. Then—it was with a curious reluctance—she climbed the stairs to Francis's absurd little curtained balcony.
Francis, evidently, did not sleep so very well, or he had not that night at all events. The couch was very tossed, one pillow lay on the ground with a dent in its midst as if an angry hand had thrust it there, and, most unfairly, hit it after it was down. The covers were "every which way," as Marjorie said, picking them up and shaking them out with housewifely care. Francis's pajamas and a shabby brown terry bath-robe lay about the floor, the bathrobe in a ridiculously lifelike position with both its sleeves thrown forward over the pillow, as if it were trying to comfort it for all it had been through.
Everything had aired since morning, so she disguised the couch again in its slip-cover, put the cretonne covers back on the pillows, and the couch stood decorous and daytime-like again. She laid her hand on the pillow for a moment after she was all through, as if she were touching something she was sorry for.