took a pair of scissors. We took a small bottle of blackberry cordial
for emergencies, a cake of soap, a salt-cellar for seasoning the fish
and rabbits, two towels, a package of court-plaster, Aggie's hay-fever
remedy, a bottle of oil of pennyroyal to use against mosquitoes, and
a large piece of canvas, light but strong, cut like the diagram.

[Illustration]

Tish said it was the regulation Indian tepee, and that a squaw could set
one up in an hour and have dinner cooked inside it in thirty minutes
after. She said she guessed we could do it if an Indian squaw could, and
that after we'd cut the poles once, we could carry them with us if we
wished to move. She said the tent ought to be ornamented, but she had
had no time, and we could paint designs on it with colored clay in the
woods when we had nothing more important to do!

It made a largish bundle, but we did not intend to travel much. We
thought we could find a good place by a lake somewhere and put up the
tent, and set a few snares, and locate the nearest berry-bushes and
mushroom-patches, and then, while the rabbits were catching themselves,
we should have time to get acquainted with our souls again.

Tish put it in her terse manner most intelligently. "We intend to
prove," she stated to Mrs. Ostermaier, the minister's wife, who came to
call and found us all sitting on the floor trying to get used to it, for
of course there would be no chairs, "we shall prove that the trappings
of civilization are a delusion and a snare. We shall bring back 'Mens
sana in corpore sano'."

The minister's wife thought this was a disease, for she said, "I hope
not, I'm sure," very hastily.

"We shall make our own fire and our own shelter," said Tish from the
floor. "We shall wear one garment, loose enough to allow entire freedom
of movement. We shall bathe in Nature's pools and come out cleansed. On
the Sabbath we shall attend divine service under the Gothic arches of
the trees, read sermons in stones, and instead of that whining tenor in
the choir we shall listen to the birds singing praise, overhead."

Mrs. Ostermaier looked rather bewildered. "I'm sure I hope so," she said
vaguely. "I don't like camping myself. There are so many bugs."

As Tish said, some ideas are so large that the average person cannot see
them at all.

We had fixed on Maine. It seemed to combine all the necessary qualities:
woods and lakes, rabbits, game and fish, and--solitude. Besides,
Aggie's hay fe