"I am so sorry to have kept you waiting; but I--I did sleep so soundly. I won't be a moment longer than I can help."
Nor was it long before she threw the door wide open, and came out on to the ledge at the top of the little flight of steps. He was lying on the turf, with a pipe in his mouth, a newspaper in his hands. She was conscious, as she came out into the open, of the glory of the morning. He seemed to be conscious only of her. Jumping up he saluted her with his hand.
"Why," he exclaimed, "you're a living advertisement of the excellence of my domestic arrangements; you look as fresh as a new pin. If you had been able to indulge in the luxury of a marble bath, and a barber, you could look no fresher. Good-morning--I need not ask you how you've slept--and here's the sun in a cloudless sky to greet you."
She came down the steps, all blushes; smiling as she had not done since she left the convent. The process of preparing breakfast began. She was conscious that she ought to intrude no longer on this stranger's hospitality. But, in the first place, her shyness kept her from giving expression to that consciousness; and, in the second, something told her that, say what she might, he would not let her go till she had shared with him his morning meal. So, making a virtue of what really was necessity, she held her peace upon the subject of her going; and helped him with his preparations for the meal.
Girl-like, she found those preparations most amusing; she had not been so entertained for many a day. There were eggs and bacon to be fried; the kettle to be boiled; bread and butter to be cut; the table to be laid. Acting on instructions, this latter she made her special business. The table was the ground. On it she spread a tablecloth; on the white cloth were placed the necessary cups and saucers, plates and spoons, knives and forks. The cooking was done on an oil-stove inside the caravan.
"Read the advertisements," exclaimed the stranger, "and an oil-stove can do anything that the most unreasonable camper-out can possibly require--up to cooking a dinner for any number, anywhere, in a torrent of rain and a storm of wind. As a matter of plain fact it won't really cook out-of-doors at all; that's the one advantage of a house on wheels: you can keep it under cover, though it smells the place out. Humour an oil-stove; coddle it; and it may cook something, sometimes, which a hardy stomach may be able to digest. Subject it to any one of the ten million conditions it dislikes, fight as you will, it will beat you out of sight; and, in spite of all your struggles, you'll go hungry in the end. I know! I've tried every sort that's made; each is worse than the other. Now where's that dish? I've a constitutional objection to eating my food out of a frying-pan, if it can possibly be avoided; so if you'll be so good as to take the dish out of the oven, where it's supposed to be getting hot, I'll turn these eggs and this bacon out upon it, and we'll start on them while we still have strength enough to do it."
Presently the girl and the man were seated on opposite sides of that impromptu table.
CHAPTER VIII
[MR FRAZER GOES SHOPPING]
The morning was bright and clear; the air was sweet and buoyant; the food was good, the man and the girl were hungry, they both made an excellent meal. And, while they ate and drank, and, between whiles, talked, each, more or less furtively, took stock of the other. Dorothy found that the hazy impression she had formed of the stranger overnight was not in the least bit like him. He was younger than she had thought. She was not much of a judge of men's years; since her experience of them was so extremely limited, it was hardly likely that she would be. In the darkness she had set him down as somewhere in the forties; now, in the bright sunshine, which ages some of us, she supposed him to be somewhere in the early thirties. There was about him an appearance of vigour--the vigour which goes with youth--for which she was unprepared. Then, too, he was so much better-looking than she had taken him to be--perhaps in thinking so she was influenced by the accident that she was dark and he was fair. His eyes were very blue, and very bright; the skin of his face and neck, though slightly tanned, was delicate as any girl's; his hair and beard were flaxen. He was taller, too, than she had imagined--when he stood up she saw that he must be at least six feet; his shoulders were so broad, he held himself so straight, there was about him such a glow of health and strength, that it did her good to look at him. And his attire suited him well; or she thought it did--certainly there could scarcely have been less of it. He wore no cap or coat or waistcoat; his canvas shirt was open at the neck; his grey flannel trousers had as belt a handkerchief of scarlet silk; he was shod with stout brown shoes. It was a costume suited to fine weather out-of-doors; and, free and easy as it was, both it and the wearer pleased the lady's undoubtedly inexperienced eyes.