of cooking and
fire-making; but of the super-feminine art of flattery she was a
thorough mistress.

Now as Riatt finished building his fire, and began to bring in buckets of
snow to supply their need of water, the gentle flow of her flattery
soothed him as the sound of a hidden brook in the leafy month of June.
Nor, strangely enough, did the fact that he dimly apprehended its purpose
in the least interfere with his enjoyment.

"If ever I'm thrown away on a desert island, I speak to be thrown away
with you," she said. "There isn't another man of my acquaintance who
could bring order out of these primitive conditions."

He laughed. "Well, you know," he said, "this isn't really what you'd call
primitive. I was snowed up in Alaska once."

"Alaska! You've been snowed up in Alaska?" she echoed in the tone of a
child who says: was it a _black_ bear?

Oh, yes, it lightened his toil. Nevertheless, he asked for her
assistance in trying to find something to eat. She knew no more about
the kitchen than he did, but she advanced toward a door and opened it
gingerly between her thumb and forefinger. It was the kitchen closet.
She opened a tin box.

"There is something here that looks like gravel," she called. He rushed
to her side. It was cereal. He found other supplies, too, a little salt,
sugar, coffee, and a jar of bacon.

"How clever of you to know what they all are," she murmured, and he felt
as if he had invented them out of thin air, like an Eastern magician.

He carried them back to the kitchen. "I wonder if you'd get the coffee
grinder," he said.

She hadn't the faintest idea what a coffee grinder looked like, but she
went away to find it, and came back presently with an object strange
enough to serve any purpose.

"Is this it?" she asked.

"That's a meat chopper," he answered, and then laughed. "You're not a
very good housekeeper, are you?"

"Of course not," she said. "Did you ever know an agreeable woman who was?
Good housekeepers are always bores, because they can never for an instant
get their minds off the most tiresome things in the world like bills, and
how the servants are behaving. All clever women are bad housekeepers, and
so they always find some one like you to take care of them."

He was putting the cereal to boil, and answered only after a second.
"Perhaps you'll think me old-fashioned, but I cannot help respecting the
art of housekeeping."

"Oh, so do I in its place," replied Miss Fenimer. "My