"It just shows what you can do, if you must!" said Susan, complacently eying the finished structure.
"It's handsomer than ever!" Mrs. Carroll said. The afternoon sunlight was streaming in across the newly swept hearth, and touching to brighter colors the Navajo blanket stretched on the floor. "And now we have one more happy association with the camp!' she finished contentedly.
"Billy is wishing he could transfer all his strikers up here," said Susan dimpling. "He thinks that a hundred miles of forest are too much for just a few people!"
"They wouldn't enjoy it," he answered seriously, "they have had no practice in this sort of life. They'd hate it. But of course it's a matter of education---"
"Help! He's off!" said the irreverent Susan, "now he'll talk for an hour! Come on, Betts, I have to go for milk!"
Exquisite days these for them all, days so brimming with beauty as to be forever memorable. Susan awoke every morning to a rushing sense of happiness, and danced to breakfast looking no more than a gay child, in her bluejacket's blouse, with her bright hair in a thick braid. Busy about breakfast preparations, and interrupted by a hundred little events in the forest or stream all about her, Billy would find her. There was always a moment of heat and hurry, when toast and oatmeal and coffee must all be brought to completion at once, and then they might loiter over their breakfast as long as they liked.
Afterward, Susan and Mrs. Carroll put the house in order, while the others straightened and cleaned the camp outside. Often the talks between the two women ran far over the time their work filled, and Betsey would come running in to ask Mother and Susan why they were laughing. Laughter was everywhere, not much was needed to send them all into gales of mirth.
Usually they packed a basket, gathered the stiff, dry bathing suits from the grass, and lunched far up in the woods. Fishing gear was carried along, although the trout ran small, and each fish provided only a buttery, delicious mouthful. Susan learned to swim and was more proud of her first breathless journey across the pool than were the others with all their expert diving and racing. Mrs. Carroll swam well, and her daughters were both splendid swimmers.
After the first dip, they lunched on the hot shingle, and dozed and talked, and skipped flat stones on the water, until it was time to swim again. All about them the scene was one of matchless beauty. Steep banks, aquiver with ferns, came down on one side of the pool, to the very edge of the crystal water; on the other, long arcades, shot with mellow sunlight, stretched away through the forest. Bees went by on swift, angry journeys, and dragon-flies rested on the stones for a few dazzling palpitating seconds, and were gone again. Black water-bugs skated over the shallows, throwing round shadows on the smooth floor of the pool.