“Oh, no, nothing like that,” smiled Marian.
“Anyway you’ll help me with my book, won’t you? I have it only a third finished. After dinner I’ll read that to you and you may tell me frankly whether it’s any good or not.”
“I tried a story once myself,” said Lucile with a laugh.
“How did you come out with it?”
“Haven’t come out yet, but I’m really crazy to get back to the city and find out about it. I mailed it to the editor of ‘Seaside Tales’.”
The igloo was heated by genuine seal-oil lamps and over these Marie cooked her food. The pots and kettles were of the antique copper type traded to Eskimos by Russians long before the white man reached the Arctic shore of Alaska. The food cooked in this manner over a slow fire was declared to be delicious.
“And now,” said their hostess, when the dishes had been washed and put away, “I’ll introduce you to my alcove bedroom.”
Drawing aside a pair of heavy deerskin curtains she revealed a platform some six by eight feet. This was piled high with skin rugs of all descriptions. White bearskin, Russian squirrel, red fox and beaver rivaled one another in softness and richness of coloring.
“You see,” she explained, “it’s sort of a compromise between the narrow shelf of the Eskimo igloo and the broader sleeping room of the Chukches of Siberia.”
Lucile and Marian were fascinated. It took them back to the old days of Cape Prince of Wales, of East Cape and Siberia.