“Pitcher of George Washington!” murmured Tim, the hackman, staring at her wide-eyed. “What a ’magination that young one’s got!”
But the little girl did not hear this comment, else she would have been unhappy.
They jogged along very comfortably, reaching the camp a little before noon. Adams’ camp was the largest lumber camp near Sunrise Cove; but it was a raw-looking place—nothing but a clump of sheet-iron sheds and log huts.
The snow on the roofs, and the fact that the drifts hid many unsightly things, made the place seem less crude than it really was. Still, Carolyn May was doubtful as to whether or not she would like to live there.
There was but one woman in the camp, Judy Mason. She lived in one of the log huts with her husband. He was a sawyer, and Judy did the men’s washing.
Benjamin Hardy was pleased, indeed, to see his little friend again. She sought him out as soon as the engineer blew the whistle for the noon rest, and they went into the bunk-house together, where more than forty men gathered around the long table for dinner.
There was no tablecloth, and the food was served in basins, and they ate off tin pie plates, and drank out of tin mugs. But the men were a jolly crowd, and the dinner hour was enlivened by jokes and good-natured foolery.
Carolyn May appreciated their attempts to amuse her, but she clung close to Benjamin, for she had a question in her mind that only he, she thought, could answer.
“You come with me, please,” she whispered to the old seaman after dinner. “You can smoke. You haven’t got to go back to work yet, and Tim is only just loading his sled. So we can talk.”
“Aye, aye, little miss. What’ll we talk about?” queried Benjamin cautiously, for he remembered that he was to be very circumspect in his conversation with her.