"Now you see," she explained, "I can put my frying pan, and coffee pot, and kettle across the two logs. I can get at them easy, and don't burn my fingers. Now you may peel the potatoes."
The Easterner peeled potatoes under constant laughing amendment as to method. Then the small cook collected her materials about her, in grand preparation for the final rites. She turned back the loose sleeves of her blouse to the elbow.
This drew an exclamation from Bennington.
"Why, Mary, how white your arms are!" he cried, astonished.
She surveyed her forearm with a little blush, turning it back and forth.
"I am pretty tanned," she agreed.
The coffee pot was filled and placed across the logs at one end, and left to its own devices a little removed from the hottest of the fire. The kettle stood next, half filled with salted water, in which nestled the potatoes like so many nested eggs. Mary mixed a mysterious concoction of corn meal, eggs, butter, and some white powder, mushing the whole up with milk and water. The mixture she spread evenly in the bottom of the frying pan, which she set in a warm place.
"It isn't much of a baking tin," she commented, eyeing it critically, "but it'll do."
Under her direction Bennington impaled the two slices of ham on long green switches, and stuck these upright in the ground in such a position that the warmth from the flames could just reach them.
"They'll never cook there," he objected.