soldiers, and he and I attempted to boil a few eggs in the deep
mess-kettle and to make the water boil in the huge tea-kettle.

But Adams, as it turned out, was not a cook, and I must confess
that my own attention had been more engrossed by the study of
German auxiliary verbs, during the few previous years, than with
the art of cooking.

Of course, like all New England girls of that period, I knew how
to make quince jelly and floating islands, but of the actual,
practical side of cooking, and the management of a range, I knew
nothing.

Here was a dilemma, indeed!

The eggs appeared to boil, but they did not seem to be done when
we took them off, by the minute-hand of the clock.

I declared the kettle was too large; Adams said he did not
understand it at all.

I could have wept with chagrin! Our first meal a deux!

I appealed to Jack. He said, "Why, of course, Martha, you ought
to know that things do not cook as quickly at this altitude as
they do down at the sea level. We are thousands of feet above the
sea here in Wyoming." (I am not sure it was thousands, but it was
hundreds at least.)

So that was the trouble, and I had not thought of it!