“The question is,” he reflected, trying to view himself in the edge of the lake:  “Will Dorothea like it?  She’s very keen about clothes.  And gee, how she hates a beard!”

“You could shave as the Indians do,” Tish said.

“How?”

“With a clamshell.”

He looked dubious, but Tish assured him it was feasible.  So he hunted a clamshell, a double one, Tish requested, and brought it into camp.

“I’d better do it for you,” said Tish.  “It’s likely to be slow, but it is sure.”

He was eyeing the clamshell and looking more and more uneasy.

“You’re not going to scrape it off?” he asked anxiously.  “You know, pumice would be better for that, but somehow I don’t like the idea.”

“Nothing of the sort,” said Tish.  “The double clamshell merely forms a pair of Indian nippers.  I’m going to pull it out.”

But he made quite a fuss about it, and said he didn’t care whether the Indians did it or not, he wouldn’t.  I think he saw how disappointed Tish was and was afraid she would attempt it while he slept, for he threw the Indian nippers into the lake and then went over and kissed her hand.

“Dear Miss Tish,” he said; “no one realizes more than I your inherent nobility of soul and steadfastness of purpose.  I admire them both.  But if you attempt the Indian nipper business, or to singe me like a chicken while I sleep, I shall be—­forgive me, but I know my impulsiveness of disposition—­I shall be really vexed with you.”

Toward the last we all became uneasy for fear hard work was telling on him physically.  He used to sit cross-legged on the ground, sewing for dear life and singing Hood’s “Song of the Shirt” in a doleful tenor.

“You know,” he said, “I’ve thought once or twice I’d like to do something—­have a business like other fellows.  But somehow dressmaking never occurred to me.  Don’t you think the expression of this right pant is good?  And shall I make this gore bias or on the selvage?”

He wanted to slash one trouser leg.

“Why not?” he demanded when Tish frowned him down.  “It’s awfully fetching, and beauty half-revealed, you know.  Do you suppose my breastbone will ever straighten out again?  It’s concave from stooping.”

It was after this that Tish made him exercise morning and evening and then take a swim in the lake.  By the time he was to start back, he was in wonderful condition, and even the horse looked saucy and shiny, owing to our rubbing him down each day with dried grasses.

The actual leave-taking was rather sad.  We’d grown to think a lot of the boy and I believe he liked us.  He kissed each one of us twice, once for himself and once for Dorothea, and flushed a little over doing it, and Aggie’s eyes were full of tears.

He rode away down the trail like a mixture of Robinson Crusoe and Indian brave, his rubbing-fire stick, his sundial with burned figures, and his bow and arrow jingling, his eagle feather blowing back in the wind, and his moccasined feet thrust into Mr. Willoughby’s stirrups, and left us desolate.  Tish watched him out of sight with set lips and Aggie was whimpering on a bank.