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Perkenpine, "but I'm goin' to scratch things together for movin'. We'll have dinner here, and then we'll pack up and be off as soon as the carts come. That's what Phil says he's goin' to do." With a satisfied mind and internal gratitude to Mrs.
"By George, how he makes that axe fly!" When the bishop finished his work he drove his axe-head deep into a stump, washed his hands and his face, resumed the clothing he had laid aside, and then sat down to supper. There was nothing stingy about Matlack, and the wood-chopper made a meal which amply compensated him for the deficiencies of the Perkenpine repast.
"It gives me pleasure, sir," said she, "to meet with you and your wife. It is so seldom that we find any one " She was interrupted by Mrs. Perkenpine, who stood behind her. The she-guide was a large woman, apparently taller than Matlack. Her sunburnt face was partly shaded by a man's straw hat, secured on her head by strings tied under her chin.
At last the bishop rose and said he would not keep Miss Raybold from her meal. "Will you not join us?" she asked. "I shall be glad to have you do so." The bishop hesitated for a moment, and then he accompanied Corona. As Mrs. Perkenpine turned from the camp cooking-stove, a long-handled pan, well filled with slices of hot meat, in her hand, she stood for a moment amazed.
He came from Sadler's, and I've been looking high and low for you." "A man from Sadler's," said Matlack, turning to Mrs. Perkenpine, "and I must be off to see him. Remember what I told you about the supper." And so saying, he walked rapidly away. Out in the open Matlack found the bishop. "Obliged to you for lookin' me up," he said, "it's a pity to give you so much trouble."
Archibald to hear her, "that the true purpose and intention of our plan is properly understood by all of the party. I think, after some explanation, everything will go well, but I have been endeavoring for the last half-hour to find Mrs. Perkenpine, and have utterly failed. I am very hungry, but I can discover nothing to eat.
In consequence of this resolution the two young men reached Camp Rob about the same time that the Archibald boat touched shore, and at least an hour before they would have arrived had they remained in their boat. The party was met by Mrs. Perkenpine, bearing letters and newspapers. A man had arrived from Sadler's in their absence, and he had brought the mail.
I'll be hanged," he said to himself, as he closed the door of the stove, "if this isn't hermitism with a vengeance. I wonder who'll be the next one to cut and run; most likely it will be Mrs. Perkenpine." Early in the afternoon, warm and dusty, Martin presented himself before Peter Sadler, who was smoking his pipe on the little shaded piazza at the back of the house. "Oh, ho!" said Peter.
"No, sir," said she; "I don't want none of his stories. I've heard them all mostly two or three times over." "I dare say you have," said Phil, seating himself on a fallen trunk, a little back from the fire; "but you see, Mrs. Perkenpine, you are so obstinate about keepin' on livin'. If you'd died when you was younger, you wouldn't have heard so many of those stories."
The reading of the paper occupied at least half an hour, and when it was finished, and Corona had begun to make some remarks on a portion of it which she had not fully elaborated, Mrs. Perkenpine approached, and stood before her. "Well, miss," said she, "I'm off." Miss Raybold fixed her eye-glasses upon her. "What do you mean?" she asked. "I'm goin' back to Sadler's," she replied.
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