“Pretty healthy proposition, ain’t she?” Jake Cornell demanded, following his host’s gaze with approval.

“None o’ your gammon, Jake,” the Virgin snapped back, with lip curled contemptuously for Vance’s especial benefit.  “I fancy it’d be more in keeping if you’d look to pore Blanche, there.”

“Fact is, we’re plum ding dong played out,” Jake said.  “An’ Blanche went through the ice just down the trail, and her feet’s like to freezin’.”

Blanche smiled as Corliss piloted her to a stool by the fire, and her stern mouth gave no indication of the pain she was suffering.  He turned away when the Virgin addressed herself to removing the wet footgear, while Bishop went rummaging for socks and moccasins.

“Didn’t go in more’n to the ankles,” Cornell explained confidentially; “but that’s plenty a night like this.”

Corliss agreed with a nod of the head.

“Spotted your light, and—­hem—­and so we come.  Don’t mind, do you?”

“Why, certainly not—­”

“No intrudin’?”

Corliss reassured him by laying hand on his shoulder and cordially pressing him to a seat.  Blanche sighed luxuriously.  Her wet stockings were stretched up and already steaming, and her feet basking in the capacious warmth of Bishop’s Siwash socks.  Vance shoved the tobacco canister across, but Cornell pulled out a handful of cigars and passed them around.

“Uncommon bad piece of trail just this side of the turn,” he remarked stentoriously, at the same time flinging an eloquent glance at the demijohn.  “Ice rotten from the springs and no sign till you’re into it.”  Turning to the woman by the stove, “How’re you feeling, Blanche?”

“Tony,” she responded, stretching her body lazily and redisposing her feet; “though my legs ain’t as limber as when we pulled out.”

Looking to his host for consent, Cornell tilted the demijohn over his arm and partly filled the four tin mugs and an empty jelly glass.

“Wot’s the matter with a toddy?” the Virgin broke in; “or a punch?”

“Got any lime juice?” she demanded of Corliss.

“You ’ave?  Jolly!” She directed her dark eyes towards Del. “’Ere, you, cookie!  Trot out your mixing-pan and sling the kettle for ’ot water.  Come on!  All hands!  Jake’s treat, and I’ll show you ’ow!  Any sugar, Mr. Corliss?  And nutmeg?  Cinnamon, then?  O.K.  It’ll do.  Lively now, cookie!”

“Ain’t she a peach?” Cornell confided to Vance, watching her with mellow eyes as she stirred the steaming brew.

But the Virgin directed her attentions to the engineer.  “Don’t mind ’im, sir,” she advised. “’E’s more’n arf-gorn a’ready, a-’itting the jug every blessed stop.”

“Now, my dear—­” Jake protested.

“Don’t you my-dear me,” she sniffed.  “I don’t like you.”

“Why?”

“Cos . . .”  She ladled the punch carefully into the mugs and meditated.  “Cos you chew tobacco.  Cos you’re whiskery.  Wot I take to is smooth-faced young chaps.”