“We’ll fix up a tent for you, if you like,” Jim told her. “Just say the word.”
“Not for me, thank you,” said Brownie, hastily. “This open-air sleeping notion is all very well for them as likes it—but I’m used to four walls an’ a winder. I like something you can lock—an’ where can you lock a tent, Master Jim?—tell me that!” She propounded this unanswerable query with an air of triumph. “Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to any bunk to put me into it, bunks not bein’ built on my lines. I’d hate to come down in the night, like that there Philistine idol in the Bible.”
“Why, you wouldn’t have far to fall!” said Jim, laughing.
“Thank you, but any distance is far enough when you’re my weight,” Brownie responded, with dignity. “Now, Miss Norah an’ Miss Jean, seein’ as how I’ve got my breath again, I think we’d better start bedmaking.”
“Don’t you bother, Brownie; we can fix up our own,” Jim said, politely—and greatly hoping that his politeness would have no effect. It had none.
“Humph!” said Mrs. Brown. “Handy you may be with tools an’ horses, Master Jim, but I never yet did see the man or boy that was handy with bedmaking. I’ve noticed that bedclothes seem to paralyse a man’s common sense when he starts to make a bed; he don’t seem to be able to realize what relation they have to the mattress. Generally he fights with them quite desperate, and gets them nearly tied in knots before the job’s done. So just you two lie there peaceful, an’ me an’ the young ladies will do it in two twos.”
The boys’ bedmaking ambition was of no soaring nature, and they were very content to “lie peaceful,” watching the sun dip behind the trees that fringed the lagoon. Then came Mr. Linton, who nodded approval of the workmanlike camp.
“First rate!” he said, warmly. “For destitute and burnt-out people, we shan’t fare too badly.”
“Rather not!” Jim answered. “How did you get on, Dad?”
“Oh, all right. Telephone was as indistinct as usual, but I managed to say a good deal of what I wanted through it. There will be an insurance man down to-morrow.” Mr. Linton smiled at the bedmakers, who came out of the last tent and settled down under the trees thankfully. “They’ve found Harvey,” he concluded.