His face clouded for a moment or two; then he said, with the air of one
dismissing an unpleasant topic: "This water's boiling like mad. Now is my time to prove my assertion
that I am capable of making coffee. I want two jugs, or this jug and the
tin will do. The coffee? Thanks. I'm afraid I'll have to get you to hold
the tin. This is the native method: You make it in the tin--so; then,
after a moment or two, you pour the liquid--not the coffee grounds--into
the jug, then back, and then back again, and lo! you have café à la
Français, or Cairo, or Clapham fashion."
"It's very good," she admitted, when it had cooled sufficiently for her
to taste it. "And that is how you made it on the battlefield?"
"Scarcely," he said. "There was no jug, only an empty meat can; and the
water--well, the water was almost as thick, with mud, before the coffee
was put in as afterward, and the men would scarcely have had patience
to wait for the patent process. Poor beggars! Some of them had not had a
drop past their lips for twenty-four hours--and been fighting, too."
Nell listened, with her grave gray eyes fixed on his face.
"How sorry you must have been to leave the army!" she said thoughtfully.
"Does warfare seem so alluring?" he retorted, with a laugh. "But you're
right; I was sorry to send in my papers, and I've been sorrier since the
day I did it."
Nell curled herself up in the bottom of the boat like a well-fed and
contented cat, and Vernon, having washed the plates by the simple
process of dragging them backward and forward through the water,
stretched himself and felt in his pockets. He relinquished the search
with a sigh of resignation, and Nell, hearing it, looked up.
"Are you not going to smoke?" she asked. "Dick would have his pipe
alight long before this; and, of course, I don't mind--if that is what
you were waiting for. Why should I?"
"Thanks; but, like an idiot, I've forgotten my pipe. I've got some
tobacco and cigarette paper."
"Then you are all right," she remarked.
"Scarcely," he said carelessly. "This stupid mummy of an arm of mine
prevents me rolling a cigarette, you see."
"How stupid of me to forget that!" she said. "Give me the tobacco and
the paper and let me try."