nervous way. "I am sure you are chilled through-- quite chilled
through. I will bring chairs." He stopped abruptly and looked about
him with an embarrassed air, his gaze coming to rest on the only chair
which adorned the room.

Betty, seeing his confusion, was trying to think of something helpful
to say, when the little man suddenly found a way out of his quandary.

"Ah, I have it!" he cried, seizing enthusiastically upon a long bench
that stood on one side of the room. "Four can sit upon this quite
easily, I am sure. A happy thought-- a very happy thought--" and he
pulled and tugged at the bench until he succeeded in moving it close
to the fire,

Afterward it occurred to the girls that they might have helped him,
for it was a very heavy bench and he was rather a frail old man. But
at the time they were too interested in this unusual place and their
rather extraordinary host, to think of anything very rational.

However, they seated themselves dutifully in a row upon the bench,
"for all the world like an orphan asylum out for an airing," as Mollie
said later, and gratefully stretched out their sodden shoes to the
blaze.

They were cold and they were wet and they were fast becoming very
hungry, all of which might have been expected to form a very good
reason why they should have been miserable, But they weren't
miserable-- not at all. To the Outdoor Girls the thrill of an
adventure always more than counterbalanced the possible discomforts
attending it.