"I can cook very nicely," she said smilingly. "It is part of my profession, you know. So if you two guides will be kind enough to build the fire and help me—" She let her violet eyes linger on me for an instant, then on Brown. A moment later he and I were jostling each other in our eagerness to obey her slightest suggestion. It is that way with men.
So we built her a fire and unpacked our provisions, and we waited very politely on the ladies when dinner was ready.
It was a fine dinner—coffee, bacon, flap-jacks, soup, ash-bread, stewed chicken.
The heavy artillery, made ravenous by their journey, required vast quantities of ammunition. They banqueted largely. I gazed in amazement at Mrs. Doolittle Batt as she swallowed one flap-jack after another, while her eyes bulged larger and larger.
Nor was the capacity of Miss Dingleheimer and the Reverend Dr. Jones to be mocked at by pachyderms.
Brown and I left them eating while we erected the row of little tents. Every lady had demanded a separate tent.
So we cut saplings, set up the silk, drove pegs, and brought armfuls of balsam boughs.
I was afraid they'd demand their knitting and other utensils, but they had eaten to repletion, and were sleepy; and as each toilet case or reticule contained also a nightgown, they drew the flaps of their several tents without insisting that we unpack Arthur's panniers.
They all had disappeared within their tents except Miss White, who insisted on cooking something for us, although we protested that the scraps of the banquet were all right for mere guides.
She stood beside us for a few minutes, watching us busy with our delicious dinner.