She did not finish. She got up and hunted for the rifle, which was not to be found. Then she went into the kitchen and hunted for stores, and wondered how on earth a balanced menu could be evolved from cans and dried things exclusively. But the discovery of a cache of canned vegetables helped her out, and as she really was a good cook, and loved cooking, what Francis returned to was not supper, but a very excellent little dinner. And his wife had found time, as well, to dress herself in the most fluffy and useless-looking of rosy summer frocks, with white slippers. She looked more fragile and decorative and childish than he had ever seen her, leaning across the little table talking brightly to him about her adventures in the discovery of the things that made up the meal.

An old quotation about "breaking a b.u.t.terfly upon a wheel" came to him as she chattered on, telling him delightedly how she had made up her mind to surprise him with tomato bisque if it was her last act, and how she had discovered a box that was labeled "condensed milk," and opened it with infinite pains and a hatchet; and how after she had nearly killed herself struggling with it, she had finally opened it, and found that what it really contained was deviled ham in small, vivid tins; and how she triumphed over Fate by using the ham with other things for _hors d'oeuvres_; and how she finally found powdered milk in other tins, and achieved her goal after all.

She was exactly as she would have been if all had gone well; and it is not to be supposed that Francis could help feeling it. At first he was quiet, almost gloomy; but presently, as she talked gaily on about all the trifles she could think of--domestic trifles all of them, or things to do with the cabin and its surroundings--he gave himself up to the enjoyment of the hour. It was as if he said to himself, "I'll forget for this little s.p.a.ce of time that it isn't real." He looked absorbedly into the little vivid face at the other side of the table, and once, before he thought, put out his hand to take her hand where it lay, little and slim and fragile-looking, on the table. He drew it back quickly, but not before Marjorie had seen the instinctive motion.

She smiled at him brilliantly, and touched him lightly on the shoulder as she pa.s.sed.

"Come, help me, Francis," she said. "This is our house, you know, and I mustn't do everything alone. And then I must hurry over to the other cabin, and look over my new kingdom, and it would be a shame to do it after your faithful slaves had gone to bed. They would have to get up and dress and stand at attention, wouldn't they, when they heard your august footstep?"

She laughed openly at him as she went into the kitchen, and he followed her and helped her clear away obediently and smiling.

"And now, we'll go over," she said, when everything was in place again.

"Get me my long blue cape, Francis, please. It's hanging against the door in my room."

He came and wrapped her in it, and crossed with her the s.p.a.ce between the two cabins.

"They're up yet," he said, and knocked on the door.

CHAPTER VIII

There was nothing surprising or exciting to behold when the door flew open, and the two entered.

"Oh, I've met you before," said Marjorie politely to the man who had opened it. She had danced with him the night before, and it was pleasant to find that she had not to deal entirely with strangers. He was a tired-looking, middle-aged Englishman, with a tanned, plump face that had something whimsical and what Marjorie characterized to herself as motherly about it. And the fact that he was clad in a flannel shirt and very disreputable overalls did not make him the less distinctively gentle-bred. He greeted her courteously, and took out his pipe--a pipe that was even more disreputable than his clothes.

"Mrs. Ellison wanted to come over to-night and see what she had to do,"

Francis explained.

"You mean that you were in earnest about her volunteering to take Pierre's place?" demanded the Englishman, looking at the little smiling figure in pink organdy.

"I know I look useless," interposed Marjorie for herself. "But Mr.

Ellison will tell you that I really can work hard. If somebody will only show me a little about the routine I'll be all right."

"I've taken over Pierre's job for the moment," he replied. "a.s.suredly I'll show you all I can. But it's rough work for a girl."

Marjorie smiled on.

"Very well, show me, please," she demanded, as she would if the question had been one of walking over red-hot plowshares.

She stood and looked about her as he answered her, so intent that she did not hear what he replied.

The place had rows of bunks in various stages of untidiness. It was lighted by two very smoky kerosene lamps, and had in its middle a table with cards on it. Three men sat about the table, as if they did not quite know whether to come forward and be included in the conversation or not. At the further end Marjorie could see the door that led to the cooking-place, and eyed it with interest.

"These are all of the men who are here," Francis explained. "There is another camp some miles further in the forest."

"Am I to cook for them as well?" demanded Marjorie coolly.

"Oh, no," the Englishman answered. He seemed deeply shocked at the idea. "They have a cook. By the way, Mrs. Ellison, it is only poetic justice that you should have taken over this job; for do you know that the reason Pierre gave for his sudden flight in the direction of marriage was that you and Mr. Ellison looked so happy he got lonesome for a wife!"

"Good gracious!" gasped Marjorie before she remembered herself. . . .

"That is--I didn't know our happiness showed as far off as that."

She did not dare to look at Francis, whom she divined to be standing rigidly behind her. "And now could you show me the place where I have to cook, and the things to cook with?"

Mr. Pennington--Harmsworth-Pennington was his veritable name, as she learned later--took the hint and swept her immediately off to the lean-to. The _tout-ensemble_ was not terrifying. It consisted of a kerosene stove of two burners, another one near it for emergencies, a wooden cupboard full of heavy white dishes, and a lower part to it where the stores were.

"The hardest thing for you will be getting up early," he said sympathetically. "The men have to have breakfast and be out of here by seven o'clock. And they take dinner-pails with them. Then there's nothing to get till the evening meal."

"Of course there'd be tidying to do," suggested Marjorie avidly, for she hated disorder, and saw a good deal about her.

"If you had the strength for it," said Pennington doubtfully.

"Francis thinks I have," she answered with a touch of wickedness.

Francis, behind her, continued to say nothing at all.

She spent five minutes more in the lean-to with the opportune Pennington, and gathered from him, finally, that next morning there would have to be a big pot of oatmeal cooked, and bacon enough fried for five hungry men. Griddle cakes, flapjacks, or breadstuff of some kind had to be produced also; coffee in a pot that looked big enough for a hotel, with condensed milk, and a meal apiece for their dinner-hour.

"I just give 'em anything cold that's left over," said Pennington unsympathetically. "There has to be lots of it, that's all."

Marjorie cried out in horror.

"Oh, they mustn't have those cold! But--do they have to have all that every morning?"

"Great Scott, no!" exclaimed the scandalized Pennington. "Some days they just have flapjacks, and some days just bacon and eggs and bread.

And sometimes oatmeal extra. I didn't mean that all these came at once."

She felt a bit relieved.

"I'll be in to-morrow at six," she a.s.sured him, still smiling bravely.

"I think I can manage it alone."

"One of us can always do the lifting for you, and odd ch.o.r.es," he told her.

After that she met the other men, and went back to the cabin. Francis was still following her in silence.

"How nice they are, even the grumpy ones!"

she told him radiantly. "Don't forget to knock on my door in time to-morrow, Francis."

She gave him no time to reply. She simply went to bed. And in spite of all that had come and gone she was so tired that she fell asleep as soon as she was there.

She was awakened by Francis's knock at what seemed to her the middle of the night. Then she remembered that the pines shut off the light so that it was high daylight outside before it was in here. A vague feeling of terror came over her before she remembered why; and for a moment she lay still in the unfamiliar bed, trying to remember. When she did remember she was so much more afraid that she sprang out hurriedly, because things, for some reason, are always worse when you aren't quite awake. Or better. But there was nothing to be better just now.

She bathed and dressed with a dogged quickness, trying meanwhile to rea.s.sure herself. After all, it was only cooking on a little larger scale than she was used to. After all, it was only for a few months.

After all, she mightn't be broken down by it. And--this was the only thing that was any real comfort--it would free her so completely of Francis, this a.s.sociation with him, and the daily, hourly realization that he had treated her in a cruel, unjust way, that when she went back she would be glad to forget that he had ever lived; even the days when he had been so pleasant and comforting.