FullReads

“Thousands.” She was a pretty little thing, very young, and dressed in a white motor coat with white shoes and hat.

“And–and berries?”

“There aren’t many berries,” I admitted. “The birds eat ’em. We get the ones they don’t fancy.”

Now I didn’t think for a moment that she was worried about my diet, but she was worried about the food supply in the woods, that was sure. So I sat down on a stump and told her about puffballs, and what Tish had read about ants being edible but acid, and that wood mice, roasted and not cooked too dry, were good food, but that Aggie had made us liberate the only ones we had caught, because a man she was once engaged to used to carry a pet mouse in his pocket.

Nothing had really appealed to her until I mentioned Mr. Wiggins. Then unexpectedly she began to cry again. And after that I got the whole story.

It seems she was in love with a young man who was everything a young man ought to be and had money as well. But the money was the barrier really, for the girl’s father wouldn’t believe that a youth who played polo, and did not have to work for a living, and led cotillons, and paid calls in the afternoon could have really good red blood in him. He had a man in view for her, she said, one who had made his money himself, and had to have his valet lay out his clothes for fear he’d make a mistake. Once the valet had to go to have a tooth pulled and the man had to decline a dinner.

“Father said,” finished the little girl tearfully, “that if Percy–that’s his name, and it counted against him too–that if Percy was a real man he’d do something. And then he hap-happened on a book of my small brother’s, telling how people used to live in the woods, and kill their own food and make their own fire–“

“The ‘Young Woodsman,’ of course,” I put in.

“And how the strong survived, but the weak succumbed, and he said if Percy was a man, and not a t-tailor’s dummy, he’d go out in the woods, j-just primitive man, without anything but a pair of bathing trunks, and keep himself alive for a month. If he s-stood the test father was willing to forget the ‘Percy.’ He said that he knew Mr. Willoughby could do it–that’s the other man–and that he’d come in at the end of the time with a deed for the forest and mortgages on all the surrounding camps.”

“And Percy agreed?”

“He didn’t want to. He said it took mentality and physical endurance as well as some courage to play polo. Father said it did–on the part of the pony. Then s-some of the men heard of it, and there were bets on it–ten to one he wouldn’t do it and twenty to one he couldn’t do it. So Percy decided to try. Father was so afraid that some of the campers and guides would help him that he had notices sent out at Mr. Willoughby’s suggestion offering a reward if Percy could be shown to have asked any assistance. Oh, I know he’s sick in there somewhere, or starving or–dead!”

I had had a great light break over me, and now I stooped and patted the girl on the shoulder.

“Dead! Certainly not,” I said. “I saw him last night.”

“Saw him!”

“Well, not exactly saw him–there wasn’t much light. But he’s alive and well, and–do you really want him to win?”

“Do I?” She sat up with shining eyes. “I don’t care whether he owns anything in the world but the trunks. If I didn’t think I’d add to his troubles I’d go into the woods this minute and find him and suffer with him.”

“You’d have to be married to him first,” I objected, rather startled.

But she looked at me with her cheeks as red strawberries. “Why?” she demanded. “Father’s crazy about primitive man–did primitive man take his woman to church to be married, with eight brides maids and a reception after the ceremony? Of course not. He grabbed her and carried her off.”