elf over the bunk-board
a man presented a ghastly face. His big blue eyes fixed themselves on
the lovely woman with a look of childish wonder.

"Hello, Gus--didn't see you! What's the matter--sick?"

"Yah, ai baen hwick two days. Ai tank ai lack to hav doketer."

"All right, I'll send him up. What seems the matter?"

As they talked, Mrs. Field again chilled with the cold gray
comfortlessness of it all: to be sick in such a place! The silent
appearance of the man out of his grim corner was startling. She was glad
when they drove out into the woods again, where the clear sunshine fell
and the pines stood against the blazing winter sky motionless as iron
trees. Her pleasure in the ride was growing less. To her delicate sense
this life was sordid, not picturesque. She wondered how Williams endured
it. They arrived at No. 8 just as the men were trailing down the road to
work, after eating their dinner. Their gay-colored jackets of Mackinac
wool stood out like trumpet notes in the prevailing white and blue and
bronze-green.

The boss and the sealer came out and met them, and after introductions
they went into the shanty to dinner. The cook was a deft young
Norwegian--a clean, quick, gentlemanly fellow with a fine brown
mustache. He cleared a place for them at one end of the long table, and
they sat down.

It was a large camp, but much like the others. On the table were the
same cheap iron forks, the tin plates, and the small tin basins (for
tea) which made up the dinner-set. Basins of brown sugar stood about.

"Good gracious! Do people still eat brown sugar? Why, I haven't seen any
of that for ages!" cried Mrs. Field.

The stew was good and savory, and the bread fair. The tea was not all
clover, but it tasted of the tin. Mrs. Field said:

"Beef, beef--everywhere beef. One might suppose a menagerie of desert
animals ate here. Edward, we must make things more comfortable for our
men. They must have cups to drink out of; these basins are horrible."

It was humorous to the men, this housewifely suggestion.

"Oh, make it napkins, Allie!"

"You can laugh, but I sha'n't rest after seeing this. If you thought I
was going to say, 'Oh, how picturesque!' you're mistaken. I think it's
barbarous."

She was getting impatient of their patronizing laughter, as if she were
a child. They changed their manner to one of acquiescence, but thought
of her as a child just the same.

After dinner they all went out to see the crew wor