Matlack stood and looked at her for a moment. He could not help smiling at the uncomfortable manner in which she was trying to make herself comfortable on those rough rocks.

"I'll tell you what it is, Mrs. Perkenpine," he said, "you'll get yourself into the worst kind of a hole if you go off this way, leavin' everything at sixes and sevens behind you."

"It's my nater," said she. "I'm findin' it out and gittin' it ready to show to other people. You're the fust one that's seed it. How do you like it?"

"I don't like it at all," said the guide, "and I have just come to tell you that if you don't go back to your tent and cook supper to-night and attend to your business, I'll walk over to Sadler's, and tell Peter to send some one in your place. I'm goin' over there anyway, if he don't send a man to take Martin's place."

"Peter Sadler!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Perkenpine, letting her tumbled newspaper fall into her lap. "He's a man that knows his own nater, and lets other people see it. He lives his own life, if anybody does. He's individdle down to the heels, and just look at him! He's the same as a king. I tell you, Phil Matlack, that the more I knows myself, just me, the more I'm tickled. It seems like scootin' round in the woods, findin' all sorts of funny hoppin' things and flowers that you never seed before. Why, it 'ain't been a whole day since I begun knowin' myself, and I've found out lots. I used to think that I liked to cook and clean up, but I don't; I hate it."

Matlack smiled, and taking out his pipe, he lighted it and sat down on a rock.

"I do believe," he said, "that you are the most out and out hermit of the whole lot; but it won't do, and if you don't get over your objections to cookin' you'll have to walk out of these woods to-morrow."

Mrs. Perkenpine sat and looked at her companion a few moments without giving any apparent heed to his remarks.

"Of course," said she, "it isn't only findin' out what you be yourself, but it's lettin' other people see what you be. If you didn't do that it would be like a pot a-b'ilin' out in the middle of a prairie, with n.o.body nearer nor a hundred miles."

"It would be the same as if it hadn't b'iled," remarked Matlack.

"That's jest it," said she, "and so I ain't sorry you come along, Phil, so's I can tell you some things I've found out about myself. One of them is that I like to lie flat on my back and look up at the leaves of the trees and think about them."

"What do you think?" asked Matlack.

"I don't think nothin'," said she. "Just as soon as I begin to look at them wrigglin' in the wind, and I am beginnin' to wonder what it is I think about them, I go slam bang to sleep, and when I wake up and try to think again what it is I think, off I go again. But I like it. If I don't know what it is I think, I ought to know that I don't know it. That's what I call bein' really and truly a hermick."

"What else did you find out?" inquired Matlack.

"I found out," she answered, with animation, "that I admire to read anecdotes. I didn't know I cared a pin for anecdotes until I took to hermickin'. Now here's this paper; it came 'round the cheese, and it's got a good many anecdotes scattered about in it. Let me read one of them to you. It's about a man who made his will and afterwards was a-drivin' a horse along a road, and the horse got skeered and ran over his executor, who was takin' a walk. Then he sung out, 'Oh, bless my soul!' says he. But I'll read you the rest if I can find it."

"Never mind about the anecdote," said Matlack, who knew very well that it would take Mrs. Perkenpine half an hour to spell out twenty lines in a newspaper. "What I want to know is if you found out anything about yourself that's likely to give you a boost in the direction of that cookin'-stove of yourn."

Mrs. Perkenpine was a woman whose remarks did not depend upon the remarks of others. "Phil Matlack," said she, gazing fixedly at his pipe, "if I had a man I'd let him smoke just as much as he pleased and just where he pleased. He could smoke afore he got up, and he could smoke at his meals, and he could smoke after he went to bed, and, if he fancied that sort of thing, he could smoke at family prayers; it wouldn't make no difference to me, and I wouldn't say a word to him agin' it. If that was his individdlety, I'd say viddle."

"And how about everything else?" asked Matlack. "Would you tell him to cook his own victuals and mend his clothes accordin' to his own nater?"

"No, sir," said she, striking with her expansive hand the newspaper in her lap--"no, sir. I'd get up early in the mornin', and cook and wash and bake and scour. I'd skin the things he shot, and clean his fish, and dig bait if he wanted it. I'd tramp into the woods after him, and carry the gun and the victuals and fishin'-poles, and I'd set traps and row a boat and build fires, and let him go along and work out his own nater smokin' or in any other way he was born to. That's the biggest thing I've found out about myself. I never knowed, until I began, this mornin', explorin' of my own nater, what a powerful hard thing it is, when I'm thinkin' of my own individdlety, to keep somebody else's individdlety from poppin' up in front of it, and so says I to myself, 'If I can think of both them individdleties at the same time it will suit me fust-rate.' And when you come along I thought I'd let you know what sort of a nater I've got, for it ain't likely you'd ever find it out for yourself. And now that we're in that business--"

"h.e.l.lo!" cried Matlack, springing to his feet. "There is somebody callin'

me. Who's there?" he shouted, stepping out into the bed of the stream.

A call was now heard, and in a few moments the bishop appeared some distance below.

"Mr. Matlack," he said, "there's a man at your camp inquiring for you. He came from Sadler's, and I've been looking high and low for you."

"A man from Sadler's," said Matlack, turning to Mrs. Perkenpine, "and I must be off to see him. Remember what I told you about the supper." And so saying, he walked rapidly away.

Out in the open Matlack found the bishop. "Obliged to you for lookin' me up," he said, "it's a pity to give you so much trouble."

"Oh, don't mention it!" exclaimed the bishop. "You cannot understand, perhaps, not knowing the circ.u.mstances, but I a.s.sure you I never was more obliged to any one than to that man who wants to see you and couldn't find you. There was no one else to look for you, and I simply had to go."

"You are not goin' to walk back to camp?" inquired Matlack.

"No," replied the bishop, "now that I am here, I think I will go up the lake and try to find a very secluded spot in the shade and take a nap."

The guide smiled as he walked away. "Don't understand!" said he. "You've got the boot on the wrong leg."

Arrived at his tent, Matlack found Bill Hammond, a young man in Sadler's service, who informed him that that burly individual had sent Martin away in the stage-coach, and had ordered him to come and take his place.

"All right," said Matlack. "I guess you're as good as he was, and so you can settle down to work. By-the-way, do you know that we are all hermits here?"

"Hermits?" said the other. "What's that?"

"Why, hermits," said Matlack, "is individ'als who get up early in the mornin' and attend to their own business just as hard as they can, without lookin' to the right or left, until it's time to go to bed."

The young man looked at him in some surprise. "There's nothing so very uncommon in that," said he.

"No," replied the guide, "perhaps there ain't. But as you might hear them talkin' about hermits here, I thought I'd tell you just what sort of things they are."

CHAPTER XXIV

A DISSOLVING AUDIENCE

When a strange young man a.s.sisted Matlack at the supper-table that evening, Mr. Archibald asked what had become of Martin.

"Peter Sadler has sent him away," answered the guide. "I don't know where he sent him or what he sent him for. But he's a young man who's above this sort of business, and so I suppose he's gone off to take up something that's more elevated."

"I am sorry," said Mrs. Archibald, "for I liked him."

Mr. Archibald smiled. "This business of insisting upon our own individualities," he said, "seems to have worked very promptly in his case. I suppose he found out he was fitted for something better than a guide, and immediately went off to get that better thing."

"That's about the size of it," said Matlack.

Margery said nothing. Her heart sank. She could not help feeling that what she had said to the young man had been the cause of his sudden departure.

Could he have done such a thing, she thought, as really to go and ask Mr.

Sadler, and, having found he did not mind, could he have gone to see her mother? Her appet.i.te for her supper departed, and she soon rose and strolled away, and as she strolled the thought came again to her that it was a truly dreadful thing to be a girl.

Having received no orders to the contrary, Matlack, with his new a.s.sistant, built and lighted the camp-fire. Some of the hermits took this as a matter of course, and some were a little surprised, but one by one they approached; the evening air was beginning to be cool, and the vicinity of the fire was undoubtedly the pleasantest place in camp. Soon they were all a.s.sembled but one, and Mrs. Archibald breathed freer when she found that Arthur Raybold was not there.

"I am delighted," said Corona, as soon as she took her usual seat, which was a camp-chair, "to see you all gather about the fire. I was afraid that some of you might think that because we are hermits we must keep away from each other all the time. But we must remember that we are a.s.sociate hermits, and so should come together occasionally. I was going to say something to the effect that some of us may have misunderstood the true manner and intent of the a.s.sertions of our individualities, but I do not now believe that this is necessary."

"Do you mean by all that," said Mrs. Perkenpine, "that I cooked the supper?"

"Yes," said Miss Raybold, turning upon her guide with a pleasant smile, "that is what I referred to."