“There you are!” he called aloud. “Good again! Been setting the night lines, eh? Capital! And your mother’s still fast asleep, Joan.”

His cheery laugh floated across the water; he had not been in the least disturbed by our absence, for old campers are not easily alarmed.

“Now, remember,” he went on, after we had told our little tale of travel by the fire, and Mrs. Maloney had asked for the fourth time exactly where her tent was and whether the door faced east or south, “everyone takes their turn at cooking breakfast, and one of the men is always out at sunrise to catch it first. Hubbard, I’ll toss you which you do in the morning and which I do!” He lost the toss. “Then I’ll catch it,” I said, laughing at his discomfiture, for I knew he loathed stirring porridge. “And mind you don’t burn it as you did every blessed time last year on the Volga,” I added by way of reminder.