“If you are going to see him,” she said, “you might put them where he’ll find them?”

“Certainly not.”

“But that’s not giving them to him.”

“My dear child,” I said sternly, “Percy is going to come out of these woods so well and strong that he may not have to work, but he’ll want to.  And he’ll not smoke anything stronger than corn-silk, if we’re to take charge of this thing.”

She understood quickly enough and I must say she was grateful.  She was almost radiant with joy when I told her how capable Tish was, and that she was sure to be interested, and about Aggie’s hay fever and Mr. Wiggins and the rabbit snares.  She leaned over and kissed me impulsively.

“You dear old thing!” she cried.  “I know you’ll look after him and make him comfortable and—­how old is Miss Letitia?”

“Something over fifty and Aggie Pilkington’s about the same, although she won’t admit it.”

She kissed me again at that, and after looking at her wrist watch she jumped to her feet.

“Heavens!” she said.  “It’s four o’clock and my engine has been running all this time!”

She got a smart little car from somewhere up the road, and the last I saw of her she was smiling back over her shoulder and the car running on the edge of a ditch.

“You are three darlings!” she called back.  “And tell Percy I love him—­love him—­love him!”

I thought I’d never get back to the lake.  I was tired to begin with, and after I’d gone about four miles and was limping with a splinter in my heel and no needle to get it out with, I found I still had the fungus message to the spring-wagon person under my arm.

It was dark when I got back and my nerves were rather unstrung, what with wandering from the path here and there, with nothing to eat since morning, and running into a tree and taking the skin off my nose.  When I limped into camp at last, I didn’t care whether Percy lived or died, and the thought, of rabbit stew made my mouth water.

It was not rabbit, however.  Aggie was sitting alone by the fire, waving a brand round her head to keep off mosquitoes, and in front of her, dangling from the spit, were a dozen pairs of frogs’ legs in a row.

I ate six pairs without a question and then I asked for Tish.

“Catching frogs,” said Aggie laconically, and flourished the brand.

“Where?”

“Pulling them off the trees.  Where do you think she gets them?” she demanded.

A large mosquito broke through her guard at that moment and she flung the torch angrily at the fire.

“I’m eaten alive!” she snapped.  “I wish to Heaven I had smallpox or something they could all take and go away and die.”

The frogs’ legs were heavenly, although in a restaurant I loathe the things.  I left Aggie wondering if her hay fever wasn’t contagious through the blood and hoping the mosquitoes would get it and sneeze themselves to death, and went to find Tish.