There was no denying that hers were both becoming and “decent.”  Modeled after the usual riding costume, both coat and breeches were youthfully, rather than mannishly, tailored; and the narrow, vertical stripe of the dark gray material served to make her slenderness almost girlish.  In short, what with her poet-style hair, her independent manner and direct speech, she was far more like a boy of twenty than a woman nearing thirty.

She walked with Van Emmon, dodging machinery all the way, across the big car to the little kitchenette over which he had presided.  There, to his dismay, the girl took off her coat, rolled up her sleeves, and announced her intention of helping.

“You’re a good cook, Van—­I mean, Mr.—­”

“Let it go at Van, please,” said he hastily.  “My first name is Gustave, but nobody has ever used it since I was christened.”

“Same with my ‘Edna,’ she declared.  “Mother’s name was Williams, and I was nicknamed ‘Billie’ before I can remember.  So that’s settled,” with great firmness.  The point is—­Van—­you’re a good cook, but everything tastes of bacon.  I wish you’d let me boss this meal.”

He looked rebellious for an instant, then gave a sigh of relief.  “I’m really tickled to death.”

A little later the doctor and Smith, looking across, saw Van Emmon being initiated into the system which constructs scalloped potatoes.  Next, he was discovering that there is more than one way to prepare dried beef.

“For once, we won’t cream it,” said E. Billie Jackson, dryly, as Van Emmon laid down the can-opener.  “We’ll make an omelet out of it, and see if anything happens.”

She was already beating the eggs.  He cut up the meat into small pieces, and when he was finished, took the egg-beater away from her.  He turned it so energetically that a speck of foam flew into his face.

“Go slow,” she advised, nonchalantly reaching up with a dish-towel and wiping the fleck away.  Whereupon he worked the machine more furiously than ever.

Soon he was wondering how on earth he had come to assume, all along, that she was not a woman.  He now saw that what he had previously considered boyishness in her was, in fact, simply the vigor and freshness of an earnest, healthy, energetic girl.  It dawned upon him that her keen, gray eyes were not sharp, but alert; her mouth, not hard, but resolute; her whole expression, instead of mannish, just as womanly as that of any girl who has been thrown upon her own resources, and made good.  He soon found that his eyesight did not suffer in any way because he looked at her.

“Now,” she remarked, in her businesslike way, as she placed the brimming pan into the oven, “I suppose that I’ll hear various hints to the effect that a woman has no business trying to do men’s stunts.  And I warn you right now that I’m prepared to put up a warm argument!”

“Of course,” said the geologist, with such gravity that the girl knew he didn’t mean it; “of course a woman’s place is in the home.  Surrounded by seventeen or eighteen children, and cooking for that many more hired men besides, she is simply ideal.  We realize that.”