Nell of Shorne Mills

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."