Kate was heard moving inside the cabin when Fred first called her.  Now she looked out of the door, and dodged back embarrassed when she saw the two strangers.  She was in a kimono, and had her hair down; evidently she had obeyed the professor implicitly in the matter of going to sleep.

“Oh!” she said, “I don’t know where Marion is—­as usual; but I can have luncheon ready in a very short time, I’m sure.  Is the fire—­”

“‘Luncheon!’” snorted Fred, laughing a little.  “Don’t you palm off any luncheon on us!  That sounds like a dab of salad and a dab of sauce and two peas in a platter and a prayer for dinner to hurry up and come around!  Cook us some grub, old girl—­lots of it.  Coffee and bacon and flour gravy and spuds.  We’d rather wait a few minutes longer and get a square meal, wouldn’t we, boys?  Make yourselves at home.  There’s all the ground there is, to sit down on, and there’s the whole creek to wash in, if the basin down there is too small.  I’m going to get some clean clothes and go down to the big hole and take a plunge.  How long will it be before chuck’s ready, Kate?”

Kate told him half an hour, and he went off down the creek, keeping at the edge of the little meadow, with a change of clothing under his arm and a big bath towel hung over his shoulder.  The two men followed him listlessly, too tired, evidently, to care much what they did.

Fred, leading the way, plunged through the willow fringe and came upon the creek bank three feet from where Marion lay curled up on her cushions.  He stood for a minute looking down at her before his present, material needs dominated his admiration of her beauty—­for beautiful she was, lying there in a nest of green, with her yellow hair falling loosely about her face.

“Hello!  Asleep?” he called to her, much as he had called to Kate.  “Afraid we’ll have to ask you to move on, sister.  We want to take a swim right here.  And anyway, Kate wants you right away, quick.  Wake up, like a good girl, and run along.”

“I don’t want to wake up.  Go away and let me sleep.”  Marion opened her eyes long enough to make sure that he was standing right there waiting, and closed them again.  “Go somewhere else and swim.  There’s lots of creek that isn’t in use.”

“No sir, by heck, I’m going to take my swim right here.  I’m too doggone tired to walk another yard.  Suit yourself about going, though.  Don’t let me hurry you at all.”  He sat down and began to unlace his shoes, grinning back over his shoulder at the other two who had not ventured down to the creek when they heard the voice of a woman there.

Marion sat up indignantly.  “Go on down the creek, why don’t you?”

“Oh, this place suits me fine.”  Fred, having removed one shoe, turned it upside down and shook out the sand, and began unlacing the other.

Marion waited stubbornly until he was pulling that shoe off, and then she gathered up her cushions and fled, flushed and angry.  She was frequently angry with Fred, who never yielded an inch and never would argue or cajole.  She firmly believed that Fred would actually have gone in swimming with her sitting there on the bank; he was just that stubborn.  For that she sometimes hated him—­since no one detests stubbornness so much as an obstinate person.