ll rent a motor boat. Hutchins says
she can manage one. When she's not doing that she can wash dishes."

[We had been rather chary of motor boats, you may remember, since the
time on Lake Penzance, when something jammed on our engine, and we had
gone madly round the lake a number of times, with people on various
docks trying to lasso us with ropes.]

Considering that it was she who had started the whole thing, and got
Tish's subconscious mind to working, Aggie was rather pettish.

"Huh!" she said. "I can't swim, and you know it, Tish. Those canoe
things turn over if you so much as sneeze in them."

"You'll not sneeze," said Tish. "The Northern Lights fill the air with
ozone."

Aggie looked at me helplessly; but I could do nothing. Only the year
before, Tish, as you may recall, had taken us out into the Maine woods
without any outfit at all, and we had lived on snared rabbits, and
things that no Christian woman ought to put into her stomach. This time
we were at least to go provisioned and equipped.

"Where are we going?" Aggie asked.

"Far from a white man," said Tish. "Away from milk wagons and children
on velocipedes and the grocer calling up every morning for an order.
We'll go to the Far North, Aggie, where the red man still treads his
native forests; we'll make our camp by some lake, where the deer come at
early morning to drink and fish leap to see the sunset."

Well, it sounded rather refreshing, though I confess that, until Tish
mentioned it, I had always thought that fish leaped in the evening to
catch mosquitoes.

We sent for Hutchins at once. She was always respectful, but never
subservient. She stood in the doorway while Tish explained.

"How far north?" she said crisply. Tish told her. "We'll have no
cut-and-dried destination," she said. "There's a little steamer goes up
the river I have in mind. We'll get off when we see a likely place."

"Are you going for trout or bass?"

Tish was rather uncertain, but she said bass on a chance, and Hutchins
nodded her approval.

"If it's bass, I'll go," she said. "I'm not fond of trout-fishing."

"We shall have a motor boat. Of course I shall not take the car."

Hutchins agreed indifferently. "Don't you worry about the motor boat,"
she said. "Sometimes they go, and sometimes they don't. And I'll help
round the camp; but I'll not wash dishes."

"Why not?" Tish demanded.

"The reason doesn't really matter, does it? What really concerns you is
the fact