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152 the most absurd man I ever heard of! Now, shall the cook look at her province?"

"Just the same," maintained Steele stoutly, looking as grave as before, "it's a sign and a token. Maybe a warning. We'd better look out. Queen Bea. Wouldn't it be awful …" He achieved a shudder which she found remarkably well done.

"Perfectly terrible," she laughed back at him, and he noted that the dimples were still there and, as he put it, "working." In the ramada, which they reached side by side, Beatrice found no evidences of want. Bill Rice's trip to the Junction had resulted in the sides of bacon swinging from the roof pole, in the strings of onions and red peppers which should constitute the chief interior decoration of any ramada in the world, in tin cups and plates and iron knives and forks, in all that went to make a real kitchen in the woods. There was a rustic table covered with red oilcloth, chairs improvised from boxes and upholstered in crash sacking. And there was a stove, a little sheet iron camping affair, set on rocks, and with a real stove pipe pushing upward through the fir bough ceiling. Pendant from the roof poles were tin cans labelled flour, beans, salt, butter, cottolene, onions, and so on, all doubly protected against inroads of the chipmunks.

Beatrice stood looking about her with the critical eye of the new domestic who for the first time comes into the field of her fresh endeavours. She noted pots and pans against the wall, the keg of water close at hand, the pile of dry stove wood. Upon the table was