Don't hesitate about wages. We'll pay any price
if you can only find two cooks who know the difference between broiling
beef and burning it. Till your cooks come, I'm going to take charge of
the cooking myself. I have at least such culinary skill as we old rebel
soldiers could acquire when we had next to nothing to cook."

And he did. Guilford Duncan, distinguished man of affairs, associate of
financial nabobs, bank president, and president of this railroad
company, sat hour after hour on a log, or squatted before an out-door
fire, doing his best to make palatable such food-stuffs as were to be
found in the camp.

"It's a sorry task," he said to Temple. "The stuff isn't fit to eat at
best. I wonder who bought it. God help the commissary who should have
issued it as rations, even in the starvation days of the Army of
Northern Virginia. The men would have made meat of him. But I can at
least make it look a little more palatable, and perhaps improve its
flavor a little in the cooking, till Barbara sends fresh supplies and
some capable cooks."

"What answer did she make to you when you telegraphed?"

"Hardly any at all," he answered. "She clicked out--'I'll do my best,'
and then shut off the circuit, without even a word of encouragement or
sympathy. I'm seriously afraid she is ill. You know she shares our
anxiety, and she hasn't been sleeping much, I imagine, since our
troubles here reached a crisis."

"That's your fault," said Temple. "You've told her too much of detail.
My Mary would be sleepless, too, if I had kept her minutely informed of
matters here. So I've only telegraphed her now and then, saying: 'Doing
our best, and hopeful. Love to the baby,' and she has responded: 'Your
best is always good. Go on doing it. Baby well,' or something like
that. If you ever get married, Duncan, you'll learn to practice certain
reserves with your wife--for her sake."

"No I won't."

"But why so sure?"

"Because, if I ever marry, my wife will be a certain little woman whose
fixed determination it will be to share both my triumphs and my
perplexities--especially the perplexities. She will permit no
reserves--God bless her for the most supremely unselfish and heroically
helpful woman that He ever made!"

"How women do differ in their ways!" said Temple, half musingly.

"Yes, and how stupidly men blunder in not adequately recognizing and
respecting their varying attitudes and temperaments! Do you know, Dick,
I think life is