"Hard and heartless!" exploded Orde. "There's no kinder lot of men
on earth, let me tell you. Why, there isn't a man on that river who
doesn't chip in five or ten dollars when a man is hurt or killed;
and that means three or four days' hard work for him. And he may
not know or like the injured man at all! Why--"
"What's all the excitement?" drawled Jane Hubbard behind them.
"Can't you make it a to-be-continued-in-our-next? We're 'most
starved."
"Yes-indeed!" chimed in the Incubus.
The company trooped out to the dining-room where the table, spread
with all the good things, awaited them.
"Ernest, you light the candles," drawled Jane, drifting slowly along
the table with her eye on the arrangements, "and some of you boys go
get the butter and the milk-pitcher from the ice-box."
To Orde's relief, no one threw any bread, although the whole-hearted
fun grew boisterous enough before the close of the meal. Miss
Bishop sat directly across from him. He had small chance of
conversation with her in the hubbub that raged, but he gained full
leisure to examine her more closely in the fuller illumination.
Throughout, her note was of fineness. Her hands, as he had already
noticed, were long, the fingers tapering; her wrists were finely
moulded, but slender, and running without abrupt swelling of muscles
into the long lines of her forearm; her figure was rounded, but
built on the curves of slenderness; her piled, glossy hair was so
fine that though it was full of wonderful soft shadows denied
coarser tresses, its mass hardly did justice to its abundance.
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