To do honor to his pretty niece the lumberman engaged much better quarters than he would have chosen for himself. When they went up to the rooms Nan found a pretty little bath opening out of hers, and the maid came and asked her if she could be of any help. The girl began to feel quite “grown up.” It was all very wonderful, and she loved Uncle Henry for making things so pleasant for her.
She had to run to his door and tell him this before she undressed. He had pulled off his boots and was tramping up and down the carpeted floor in his thick woolen socks, humming to himself.
“Taking a constitutional, Nan,” he declared. “Haven't had any exercise for this big body of mine all day. Sitting in that car has made me as cramped as a bear just crawling out of his den in the spring.”
He did not tell her that had he been alone he would have gone out and tramped the snowy streets for half the night. But he would not leave her alone in the hotel. “No, sir,” said Uncle Henry. “Robert would never forgive me if anything happened to his honey-bird. And fire, or something, might break out here while I was gone.”
He said nothing like this to Nan, however, but kissed her good night and told her she should always bid him good night in just that way as long as she was at Pine Camp.
“For Kate and I have never had a little girl,” said the big lumberman, “and boys get over the kissing stage mighty early, I find. Kate and I always did hanker for a girl.”
“If you owned a really, truly daughter of your own, Uncle Henry, I believe you'd spoil her to death!” cried Nan, the next morning, when she came out of the fur shop to which he had taken her.
He had insisted that she was not dressed warmly enough for the woods. “We see forty and forty-five below up there, sometimes,” he said. “You think this raw wind is cold; it is nothing to a black frost in the Big Woods. Trees burst as if there were dynamite in 'em. You've never seen the like.
“Of course the back of winter's about broken now. But we may have some cold snaps yet. Anyhow, you look warmer than you did.”
And that was true, for Nan was dressed like a little Esquimau. Her coat had a pointed hood to it; she wore high fur boots, the fur outside. Her mittens of seal were buttoned to the sleeves of her coat, and she could thrust her hands, with ordinary gloves on them, right into these warm receptacles.