"We have to eat, you know," Willie reminded her, coldly; "and nobody to cook it."
"I'm a love of a cook," said Winifred. "And I've been through your kitchen up there. It's a model—electric dingblats and all sorts of things. I'll cook the meals if the rest of you will build the fires and make the beds and wash the dishes."
"Oh, Winifred, behave!" Willie sniffed.
But Winifred would not behave. She drummed up her scheme until she raised the others to a kind of amused interest in the venture. It would be a novelty at least.
"We can always cut and run at a moment's notice," Winifred explained, for a clincher. "A couple of hours in a car and we're back in town."
"But there are no servants there, I tell you," Willie reiterated. "You don't seriously expect us to go up there and do our own work?"
"Why not?" said Winifred. "It's time you learned to use your lazy hands before they drop off from neglect."
"No thank you!" Willie demurred. "If we've got to go, we'll take along some deck-hands. What do you say, Persis?"
"The only thing I like about it," said Persis, "is the absence of the servants. I can't remember a time when they haven't been standing round staring or listening through the doors. Oh, Lord, how good it would be to be out from under their thumbs for a few days!"
"We can't afford the scandal," said Willie. "Servants are the best chaperons there are. If we went up without them there'd be a sensation in the papers."