The girl turned, resting the heel of her hoe on the earth, and both hands on the end of its handle. Bob saw a dark, oval countenance, with very red cheeks, very black eyes and hair, and an engaging flash of teeth. The eyes looked at him as frankly as a boy's, and the flash of teeth made him unaffectedly welcome.
"Why, no," replied the girl; "but I'm Mr. Thorne's sister. Won't I do?"
She was leisurely laying aside her hoe, and drawing the fringed buckskin gauntlets from her hands. Bob stepped gallantly forward to relieve her of the implement.
"Do?" he echoed. "Why, of course you'll do!"
She stopped and looked him full in the face, with an air of great amusement.
"Did you come to see Mr. Thorne on business?" she asked.
"No," replied Bob; "just ran over to see him."
"Then I'm afraid I won't do," she said, "for I must cook dinner. You see," she explained, "I'm Mr. Thorne's clerk, and if it were business, I might attend to it."
Bob flushed to the ears. He was ordinarily a young man of sufficient self-possession, but this young woman's directness was disconcerting. She surveyed his embarrassment with approving eyes.
"You might finish those beans," said she, offering the hoe. "Of course, you must stay to dinner, and I must go light the fire."
Bob finished the beans, leaned the hoe up against the house, and went around to the front. There he stopped in astonishment.
"Well, you have changed things!" he cried.
The stuffy little shed kitchen was no longer occupied. A floor had been laid between the bases of four huge trees, and walls enclosing three sides to the height of about eight feet had been erected. The affair had no roof. Inside these three walls were the stove, the kitchen table, the shelves and utensils of cooking. Miss Thorne, her sunbonnet laid aside from her glossy black braids, moved swiftly and easily here and there in this charming stage-set of a kitchen. About ten feet in front of it, on the pine needles, stood the dining table, set with white.
[Illustration: "I beg pardon," said he. The girl turned]
"Finished?" she inquired. She pointed to the water pail: "There's a useful task for willing hands."
Bob filled the pail, and set it brimming on the section of cedar log which seemed to be its appointed resting place.