method, which it seems she'd heard from Charlie Sands and which was not in the "Young Woodsman," was simple and effectual.
"Don't move," she said tensely when she heard me on the bank. "There's one here as big as a chicken!"
She struck the flare forward, and I could see the frog looking at it and not blinking. He sat in a sort of heavenly ecstasy, like a dog about to bay at the moon, while the hook dangled just at his throat.
"I'm half-ashamed to do it, Lizzie, it's so easy," she said calmly, still tickling the thing's throat with the hook. "Grab him as I throw him at you. They slip off sometimes."
The next instant she jerked the hook up and caught the creature by the lower jaw. It was the neatest thing I have ever seen. Tish came wading over to where I stood and examined the frog.
"If we only had some Tartare sauce!" she said regretfully. "I wish you'd look at my ankle, Lizzie. There's something stuck to it."
The something was a leech. It refused to come off, and so she carried both frog and leech back to the camp. Aggie said on no account to pull a leech off, it left its teeth in and the teeth went on burrowing, or laid eggs or something. One must leave it on until it was full and round and couldn't hold any more, and then it dropped off.
So all night Tish kept getting up and going to the fire to see if it was swelling. But toward morning she fell asleep and it dropped off, and we had a terrible feeling that it was somewhere in our blankets.
But the leech caused less excitement that evening than my story of Percy and the little girl in the white coat. Aggie was entranced, and Tish had made Percy a suit of rabbit skin with a cap to match and outlined a set of exercises to increase his chest measure before I was half through with my story.
But Percy did not appear, although we had an idea that he was not far off in the woods. We could hear a crackling in the undergrowth, but when we called there was no reply. Tish was eating a frog's leg when the idea came to her.
"He'll never come out under ordinary circumstances in that—er—costume," she said. "Suppose we call for help. He'll probably come bounding. Help!" she yelled, between bites, as one may say.
"Help! Fire! Police!"
"Help!" cried Aggie. "Percy, help!" It sounded like "Mercy, help!"
It worked like a charm. The faint cracking became louder, nearer, turned from a suspicion to a certainty and from a certainty to a fact. The bushes parted and Percy stood before us. All he saw was three elderly women eating frogs' legs round a fire under a cloud of mosquitoes. He stopped, dumbfounded, and in that instant we saw that he didn't need the physical exercises, but that, of course, he did need the rabbit-skin suit.
"Great Scott!" he panted. "I thought I heard you calling for help."
"So we did," said Tish, "but we didn't need it. Won't you sit down?"
He looked dazed and backed toward the bushes.
"I—I think," he said, "if there's nothing wrong I'd better not—"
"Fiddlesticks!" Tish snapped. "Are you ashamed of the body the Lord gave you? Don't you suppose we've all got skins? And didn't I thrash my nephew, Charlie Sands, when he was almost as big as you and had less on, for bathing in the river? Sit down, man, and don't be a fool."
He edged toward the fire, looking rather silly, and Aggie passed him a frog's leg on a piece of bark.
"Try this, Percy," she said, smiling.
At the name he looked ready to run. "I guess you've seen the notices," he said, "so you'll understand I cannot accept any food or assistance. I'm very grateful to you, anyhow."
"You may take what food you find, surely," said Aggie. "If you find a roasted frog's leg on the ground—so—there's nothing to prevent you eating it, is there?"
"Nothing at all," said Percy, and picked it up. "Unless, of course—"
"It's not a trap, young man," said Tish. "Eat it and enjoy it. There are lots more where it came from."
He relaxed at that, and on Tish's bringing out a blanket from the tent to throw over his shoulders he became almost easy. He was much surprised to learn that we knew his story, and when I repeated the "love him" message, he seemed to grow a foot taller and his eyes glowed.
"I'm holding out all right," he said. "I'm fit physically. But the thing that gets my goat is that I'm to come out clothed. Dorothea's father says that primitive man, with nothing but his hands and perhaps a stone club, fed himself, made himself a shelter, and clothed himself in skins. Skins! I'm so big that two or three bears would hardly be enough. I did find a hole that I thought a bear or two might fall into, and got almost stung to death robbing a bee tree to bait the thing with honey. But there aren't any bears, and if there were how'd I kill 'em? Wait until they starve to death?"
"Rabbits!" said Tish.
He looked down at himself and he seemed very large in the firelight. "Dear lady," he said, "there aren't enough rabbits in the county to cover me, and how'd I put 'em together? I was a fool to undertake the thing, that's all."
"But aren't you in love with her?" asked Aggie.
"Well, I guess I am. It isn't that, you know. I'm a good bit worse than crazy about her. A man might be crazy about a mint julep or a power boat, but—he'd hardly go into the woods in his skin and live on fish until he's scaly for either of them. If I don't get her, I don't want to live. That's all."
He looked so gloomy and savage that we saw he meant it, and Aggie was perceptibly thrilled. Trish, however, was thinking hard, her eyes on the leech. "Was there anything in the agreement to prevent your accepting any suggestions?"
He pondered. "No, I was to be given no food, drink, shelter, or any weapon. The old man forgot fire—that's how I came to beg some."
"Fire and brains," reflected Tish. "We've given you the first and we've plenty of the second to offer. Now, young man, this is my plan. We'll give you nothing but suggestions. If now and then you find a cooked meal under that tree, that's accident, not design, and you'd better eat it. Can you sew?"
"I'm like the Irishman and the fiddle—I never tried, but I guess I can." He was much more cheerful.
"Do you have to be alone?"
"I believe he took that for granted, in this costume."
"Will it take you long to move over here?"
"I think I can move without a van," he said, grinning. "My sole worldly possessions are a stone hatchet and a hairpin fishhook."
"Get them and come over," commanded Tish. "When you leave this forest at the end of the time you are going to be fed and clothed and carry a tent; you will have with you smoked meat and fish; you will carry under your arm an Indian clock or sundial; you will have a lamp—if we can find a clamshell or a broken bottle—and you will have a fire-making outfit with your monogram on it."
"But, my dear friend," he said, "I am not supposed to have any assistance and—"
"Assistance!" Tish snapped. "Who said assistance? I'm providing the brains, but you'll do it all yourself."
He
