ay you a lot better than
selling post-cards to romantic ladies, I promise you. I won't take you
away from a work for which the world is panting without more than making
it up to you financially Where do you stand as a coffee maker?"
"Wait till you taste it," said Peters reassuringly. "I'll bring you up
some water."
He started for the door, but Mr. Magee preceded him.
"The haberdasher," he explained, "sleeps below, and he's a nervous man.
He might commit the awful error of shooting the only cook on Baldpate
Mountain."
Mr. Magee went out into the hall and called from the depths the figure
of Bland, fully attired in his flashy garments, and looking tawdry and
tired in the morning light.
"I've been up hours," he remarked. "Heard somebody knocking round the
kitchen, but I ain't seen any breakfast brought in on a silver tray. My
inside feels like the Mammoth Cave."
Mr. Magee introduced the Hermit of Baldpate.
"Pleased to meet you," said Bland. "I guess it was you I heard in the
kitchen. So you're going to cater to this select few, are you? Believe
me, you can't get on the job any too soon to suit me."
Out of a near-by door stepped the black-garbed figure of Professor
Thaddeus Bolton, and him Mr. Magee included in the presentation
ceremonies. After the hermit had disappeared below, burdened with his
market basket and the supplies Mr. Magee had brought the night before,
the three amateurs at the hermit game gathered by the fire in number
seven, and Mr. Bland spoke feelingly:
"I don't know where you plucked that cook, but believe me, you get a
vote of thanks from yours truly. What is he--an advertisement for a hair
restorer?"
"He's a hermit," explained Magee, "and lives in a shack near the
mountain-top. Hermits and barbers aren't supposed to mix. He's also an
author, and is writing a book in which he lays all the trouble of the
ages at the feet of woman. Please treat him with the respect all these
dignified activities demand."
"A writer, you say," commented Professor Bolton. "Let us hope it will
not interfere with his cooking abilities. For even I, who am not much
given to thought about material things, must admit the presence of a
gnawing hunger within."
They talked little, being men unfed, while Jake Peters started
proceedings in the kitchen, and tramped up-stairs with many pails of
water. Mr. Magee requested warm water for shaving; whereupon he was
regarded with mingled emotions by his companions.
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