"I can roast, bake, boil, broil, and fry. If the lady will be suited with any of these, I will do the best I can to please her."
"I thought you were my father's clerk," added Miss Collingsby.
"I am."
"How do you happen to know how to cook, then?"
"I was brought up on the upper Missouri, where we had to do our own cooking."
"Yes, Phil is a regular Indian fighter," laughed the skipper.
"What, this young man?"
"Yes, he has shot a thousand Indians in his day, and scalped them?"
"Phil?"
"Call it two or three," I added. "And we never were in the habit of scalping them."