."

Tish stared at her; but instead of quailing before Tish's majestic eye
she laughed a little.

"I've camped before," she said. "I'm very useful about a camp. I like to
cook; but I won't wash dishes. I'd like, if you don't mind, to see the
grocery order before it goes."

Well, Aggie likes to wash dishes if there is plenty of hot water; and
Hannah, Tish's maid, refusing to go with us on account of Indians, it
seemed wisest to accept Hutchins's services.

Hannah's defection was most unexpected. As soon as we reached our
decision, Tish ordered beads for the Indians; and in the evenings we
strung necklaces, and so on, while one of us read aloud from the works
of Cooper. On the second evening thus occupied, Hannah, who is allowed
to come into Tish's sitting-room in the evening and knit, suddenly
burst into tears and refused to go.

"My scalp's as good to me as it is to anybody, Miss Tish," she said
hysterically; and nothing would move her.

She said she would run no risk of being cooked over her own camp-fire;
and from that time on she would gaze at Tish for long periods
mournfully, as though she wanted to remember how she looked when she was
gone forever.

Except for Hannah, everything moved smoothly. Tish told Charlie Sands
about the plan, and he was quite enthusiastic.

"Great scheme!" he said. "Eat a broiled black bass for me. And take the
advice of one who knows: don't skimp on your fishing-tackle. Get the
best. Go light on the canned goods, if necessary; but get the best reels
and lines on the market. Nothing in life hurts so much," he said
impressively, "as to get a three-pound bass to the top of the water and
have your line break. I've had a big fellow get away like that and chase
me a mile with its thumb on its nose." This last, of course, was purely
figurative.

He went away whistling. I wish he had been less optimistic. When we came
back and told him the whole story, and he sat with his mouth open and
his hair, as he said, crackling at the roots, I reminded him with some
bitterness that he had encouraged us. His only retort was to say that
the excursion itself had been harmless enough; but that if three elderly
ladies, church members in good standing, chose to become freebooters and
pirates the moment they got away from a corner policeman, they need not
blame him.

The last thing he said that day in June was about fishing-worms.

"Take 'em with you," he said. "They charge a cent apiece for them up