"I do wish I were clever!" grumbled Philip in acute discontent. "After breakfast I'm going to whittle out a wildwood pipe and make a birch canoe, and likely I'll weave a rush mat and a willow bed and carve some spoons and forks and a sundial."
"Will you be through by noon?" asked Diane politely.
"As a matter of fact," he said easily, "I'm going with you to lamp birds. I want to duck that fool doctor."
"You'll do nothing of the sort," said Diane with decision, "for I'm going to stay in camp and bake bread."
The bread was baking odorously and a variety of shavings flying ambitiously from an embryo pipe by ten o'clock. At noon the doctor had not yet arrived. Philip dexterously served a savory fish chowder from a pot hanging within a tripod of saplings and refused to dwell upon the thought of his eventual departure.
A man appeared among the trees to the east, switching absently at the underbrush with a cane.
"I thought so," he nodded. "That medical dub carries a cane on his professional rounds! Like as not he wears a flowing tie, a monocle and pink socks."
The man approached and raised his hat, smiling urbanely. It was Baron Tregar.
"Pray be seated!" exclaimed the Baron with sympathy. "Such a disturbing experience as you have had affords one privileges."
"Permit me," said Philip uncomfortably to Diane, "to present my chief, Baron Tregar. Excellency, Miss Westfall, to whom I am eternally indebted." And Philip's eyes sparkled with laughter as he uttered her name.
There was an old world courtliness in the Baron's bow and murmured salutation.
"Ah," said he with gallant regret, "Fate, Miss Westfall, has never seen fit to temper misfortune so pleasantly for me. Poynter, you have been exceedingly fortunate."
Diane laughed softly. It was hers to triumph now.
"_Mr. Poynter_," she said with relish, flashing a sidelong glance at that discomfited young man, "Mr. Poynter has been good enough to make the chowder. It would gratify me exceedingly, Baron Tregar, to have you test it."
Heartily anathematizing his chief, who was gratefully expressing his interest in chowder, Mr. Poynter stared perversely at his cuff.
"I wonder," he reflected uneasily, "just what he wants and how in thunder he knew!"
The Baron, gracefully adapting himself to woodland exigencies, supplied the answer.