“And the moral of this is:--Wait till people say ‘Please have some’ before you dip in. _Where_ are your manners, Caleb? _Now_, what are you looking at?” “Say, but you’re pretty, to-day!” remarked Conover, his glance roving appraisingly over her trim figure in its roughing costume, and at the tanned, eager little face, “As pretty’s you can be.” “I suppose everyone is,” laughed Desirée, in embarrassment; noting Mrs. Hawarden’s air of seeming not to have heard the bald praise, “Oh, see the beautiful green caterpillar that’s come to our party! And a whole army of nice hungry ants! There’s a spider, too. _Do_ drive him off, Jack! Don’t kill him, though. It’s bad luck. For the spider, anyway.” “Avaunt, dread monster of the wilderness!” declaimed Jack; brushing the offender away. Dinner and a long lazy afternoon. A row of exploration about the pond’s edge, a visit to the island; a ramble through the woods;--and nightfall found the campers eating a firelight supper with the crass hunger of the unaccustomed outdoor sojourner. Then a short, yawn-punctuated chat around the camp fire, and the signal for bed. It is one thing for a man of cities to be delightfully sleepy after his first long day in the woods. It is quite a different matter for him to be able to fall asleep on a many-projectioned bed of balsam, while a guide snores raucously on one side of him and a second man tosses in uneasy, muttering slumber on the other. After counting up to one hundred, and keeping tabs on a flock of visionary sheep as they leaped an equally mythical wall (and hoping in morbid disgust that some of them would fall and break their imaginary necks), Conover rose quietly, pulled on such garments as he had removed, groped about till he found his thick waterproof coat and stumbled out into the open. He kicked the fire’s smouldering logs into a blaze and looked at his watch. It was barely nine-thirty. He took out a cigar and prepared to sit down beside the logs and smoke himself sleepy again. Then she came. He was not surprised. Even before he turned his head or noticed the fall of her light feet on the mold, he somehow knew she was drawing near. He looked around to find her close behind him. Her hair was caught up loosely, and shimmered like a rust-shot aureole in the waning firelight. She wore the sweater and walking skirt of the afternoon. But her high boots had been changed for moccasins. “I couldn’t sleep,” she whispered, clasping the hands he held out to her, “All the forest and the silences seemed calling to me. Besides, Mrs. Hawarden sleeps so,--so audibly. All at once, I felt you were out here. So I came. Is it very late?” “No,” he answered in the same key, “Not much mor’n half past nine. Sit down here an’ I’ll get a blanket to wrap ’round you. I ought to send you back, so’s you won’t catch cold. But it’s--somehow it’s so good to have you right here by me. This time to-morrow night I’ll be glad to remember it.”