“You mean –?”
“His way of ordering you to cook our dinner. Really, Miss Genevieve, I should be pleased to take your place, but I have been told to keep to this. It is hard to take orders from a low fellow,–very hard for a gentleman, you know.”
Miss Leslie gazed at her shapely hands. Three days since she could not have conceived of their being so rough and scratched and dirty. Yet her disgust at their condition was not entirely unqualified.
“At least I have something to show for them,” she murmured.
“I beg pardon,” said Winthrope.
“Just look at my hands–like a servant’s! And yet I am not nearly so ashamed of them as I would have fancied. It is very amusing, but do you know, I actually feel proud that I have done something–something useful, I mean.”
“Useful?–I call it shocking, Miss Genevieve. It is simply vile that people of our breeding should be compelled to do such menial work. They write no end of romances about castaways; but I fail to see the romance in scraping skins Indian fashion, as this fellow Blake calls it.”
“I suppose, though, we should remember how much Mr. Blake is doing for us, and should try to make the best of the situation.”
“It has no best. It is all a beastly muddle,” complained Winthrope, and he resumed his nervous scraping at the big leopard skin.
The girl studied his face for a moment, and turned away. She had been trying so hard to forget.