“Why not?”

“She was my friend first.”

“Oh, well,” Judy shrugged her shoulders and shut her eyes again, “it is too hot to argue.”

There was a long silence, and then Launcelot said:  “Don’t you want to fish?”

“I hate fishing.”

“Or to pick wild flowers?”

“I hate—­” Judy had started her usual ungracious formula, before she recognized its untruth.  “Well, I don’t want to pick them now,” she amended, “I’d rather stay here.”

“But you are not going to stay here.”

“Why not?”

“You are going to help me cook those fish.”

“I won’t.”

“Oh, yes you will.  Come on.”

“Oh, well.  If you won’t let me alone.”

She slipped out of the hammock and picked up her hat.  There was a tired droop to her slender young figure.  “No, I am not going to let you alone,” said Launcelot quietly.  “You poor little thing.”

She looked at him, startled.

“Why?” she breathed.

“You are lonely.  That’s why.  You’ve got to do something.  You just think and think and think—­and get miserable—­I know—­I’ve been there.”

It came out haltingly, the boyish expression of sympathy and understanding.  And the sympathy combined with a hitherto unmet masterfulness conquered Judy.  For a moment she stood very still, then she turned to him an illumined face.

“You may call me—­Judy,” she said shyly, then slipped past him and ran to the fire.

When he reached her, she was bending over the pan.

“How nice they look,” she said, as Launcelot turned the fish, and they lay all crisp and brown in an appetizing row.

“You shall do the next,” said Launcelot, smiling a little as he glanced at her absorbed face.

So while he made the coffee, Judy fried more bacon, and they slipped six fish into the big pan.

“Mine don’t seem to brown as yours did,” she told him, anxiously.

“Perhaps the fat wasn’t hot enough,” was Launcelot’s suggestion.  “It has to be smoking.”

“Oh, dear,” sighed Judy, “mine are going to look light brown instead of lovely and golden like yours.”

“Put on some more wood.”  Launcelot’s tone was abstracted.  He was measuring the coffee, and it took all of his attention.

Judy poked a stick into the centre of the fire.  For a moment it seemed to die down, then suddenly the big black pan seemed held aloft by a solid cone of yellow flame.

The grease in the pan snapped, and little burnt bits of corn-meal flew in all directions.

“Now they are cooking all right,” and Judy shielded her face with her hand, as she held the long handle and watched complacently.

Suddenly Launcelot dropped the coffee-pot.

“Take them off, take them off,” he cried.

Judy, with her fork upraised, stared at him as if petrified.

“Why?” she stammered.