Page:Frank Stockton - Rudder Grange.djvu/116

Rh "Not if it rains, my boy," said he. "I know what it is to camp out in the rain."

Meanwhile, Mrs. Atkinson had been with Euphemia examining the tent, and our equipage generally.

"It would be very nice for a day's picnic," she said; "but I wouldn't want to stay out-of-doors all night."

And then, addressing me, she asked:

"Do you have to breathe the fresh air all the time, night as well as day? I expect that is a very good prescription, but I would not like to have to follow it myself."

"If the fresh air is what you must have," said the captain, "you might have got all you wanted of that without taking the trouble to come out here. You could have sat out on your back porch night and day for the whole two weeks, and breathed all the fresh air that any man could need."

"Yes," said I, "and I might have gone down cellar and put my head in the cold-air-box of the furnace. But there wouldn't have been much fun in that."

"There are a good many things that there's no fun in," said the captain. "Do you cook your own meals, or have them sent from the house?"

"Cook them ourselves, of course," said Euphemia. "We are going to have supper now. Won't you wait and take some?"

"Thank you," said Mrs. Atkinson; "but we must go."

"Yes, we must be going," said the captain.

"Good-bye! If it rains I'll come down after you with an umbrella."

"You need not trouble yourself about that," said I. "We shall rough it out, rain or shine."