"Oh, I've et," said Red hurriedly, the reference to that angel cake filling him with apprehension. "Had supper oveh to Vaughan's. You two go to wras'lin' yuh grub an' I'll take keer o' yuah hosses."
"Doan't yuh let him scoach thet wateh, Miss Cahteh," he volleyed as he retreated in good order, much relieved at his narrow escape. "He's a powahful wahm baby."
While she was changing her dress, Douglass got a fire going in the big Charter Oak stove and filled the kettle with fresh water from the spring. He brought over from the meat dive a generously big and tender steak and fossicked about in the pantry until he found the egg basket. There were a couple of tempting broilers lying on a platter, but he concluded that Abbie had prepared these with a view to Miss Carter's breakfast. He was grinding the coffee when she came in and she sniffed the grateful aroma rapturously.
She was very simply attired in a loose-fitting white dress with short sleeves, and about her slender waist was tied one of Abbie's huge gingham aprons. Her riding Hessians had been replaced with a pair of diminutive sandals which made a clicking little patter as she walked. He had unconsciously rolled up his sleeves, camp-cook fashion, the better to mix and mold the biscuit he contemplated making; the sight of her bare arms reminded him of his own and he hurriedly lowered the sleeves and began fumbling at the buttons. She came forward quickly and checked him with a pretty gesture.
"Put them up again! Men always work better with their sleeves rolled up, I have noticed, and all good cooks have them so. That's why I am wearing this waist; I am going to help." She looked complacently at her round, dimpled arms, then at the corded brawn of his. An irresistible impulse sent her close to his side. "Why," she said, with a fine assumption of wonder at the portentous discovery, "my arms are tanned as brown as yours." And she coquettishly held hers so close to his in comparison that they momentarily touched.
Through his veins there leaped a sudden fire as though his blood had turned to molten lava; he trembled. Stricken with a sudden terror she shrank away slightly, but her eyes never left his. The man was trying for self-control, and she wisely waited. The best time to play with fire is not when the coals are hottest.