Judy Part 7

"Anybody can cook," murmured Judy with decision.

"H-m. Can you, little girl?"

Judy sat up at that. "I'm fourteen," she flashed.

Launcelot laughed, such a contagious laugh, that in spite of herself Judy felt the corners of her lips twitch.

"That waked you up," he said, "you didn't like to have me call you 'little girl.' Well, am I to say Miss Jameson or Judy?"

Judy pondered.

"Neither," she said at last.

"Then what--?" began Launcelot. "Oh, by Jove, the bacon's burning.

I'll be back in a minute."

When he had taken the bacon out of the pan, and had laid the fish in a corn-mealed symmetrical row in the hot fat, he again turned the pan over to Perkins and came back to Judy.

"Well?" he asked, as he came up.

"Call me Judith," said the incensed young lady. "Judy is my pet name, and I keep it for--my friends."

Launcelot gave a long whistle.

"Say, do you talk like this to Anne?" he asked.

"Like what?"

"In this--er--straight from the shoulder sort of fas.h.i.+on?"

"No. Anne is my friend."

Launcelot shook his head. "You can't have Anne for a friend unless you have me."

"Why not?"

"She was my friend first."

"Oh, well," Judy shrugged her shoulders and shut her eyes again, "it is too hot to argue."

There was a long silence, and then Launcelot said: "Don't you want to fish?"

"I hate fis.h.i.+ng."

"Or to pick wild flowers?"

"I hate--" Judy had started her usual ungracious formula, before she recognized its untruth. "Well, I don't want to pick them now," she amended, "I'd rather stay here."

"But you are not going to stay here."

"Why not?"

"You are going to help me cook those fish."

"I won't."

"Oh, yes you will. Come on."

"Oh, well. If you won't let me alone."

She slipped out of the hammock and picked up her hat. There was a tired droop to her slender young figure. "No, I am not going to let you alone," said Launcelot quietly. "You poor little thing."

She looked at him, startled.

"Why?" she breathed.

"You are lonely. That's why. You've got to do something. You just think and think and think--and get miserable--I know--I've been there."

It came out haltingly, the boyish expression of sympathy and understanding. And the sympathy combined with a hitherto unmet masterfulness conquered Judy. For a moment she stood very still, then she turned to him an illumined face.

"You may call me--Judy," she said shyly, then slipped past him and ran to the fire.

When he reached her, she was bending over the pan.

"How nice they look," she said, as Launcelot turned the fish, and they lay all crisp and brown in an appetizing row.

"You shall do the next," said Launcelot, smiling a little as he glanced at her absorbed face.

So while he made the coffee, Judy fried more bacon, and they slipped six fish into the big pan.

"Mine don't seem to brown as yours did," she told him, anxiously.

"Perhaps the fat wasn't hot enough," was Launcelot's suggestion. "It has to be smoking."

"Oh, dear," sighed Judy, "mine are going to look light brown instead of lovely and golden like yours."

"Put on some more wood." Launcelot's tone was abstracted. He was measuring the coffee, and it took all of his attention.

Judy poked a stick into the centre of the fire. For a moment it seemed to die down, then suddenly the big black pan seemed held aloft by a solid cone of yellow flame.

The grease in the pan snapped, and little burnt bits of corn-meal flew in all directions.

"Now they are cooking all right," and Judy s.h.i.+elded her face with her hand, as she held the long handle and watched complacently.

Suddenly Launcelot dropped the coffee-pot.

"Take them off, take them off," he cried.