“It certainty was,” the Lone Wolf acquiesced gravely, as she departed with the pail in the direction of the spring.

Cousin Monty flitted unobtrusively to his tent, got on dry garments, fished another notebook out of his bag, and set out once more in quest of local color.  He wandered down to Mateka, where Craft Hour was in progress.  A pottery craze had struck camp, and the long tables were filled with girls rolling and patting lumps of plastic clay into vases, jars, bowls, plates and other vessels.  Cousin Monty strolled up and down, contemplating the really creditable creation of the girls with a condescending patronage that made them feel like small children in the kindergarten.  He gave the art director numerous directions as to how she might improve her method of teaching, and benevolently pointed out to a number of the girls how the things they were making were all wrong.

Finally he came and stood by Hinpoha, who was putting the finishing touches on the decoration of a rose jar, an exquisite thing, with a raised design in rose petals.  Hinpoha was smoothing out the flat background of her design when Monty paused beside her.

“You’re not holding your instrument right.” he remarked patronizingly.  “Let me show you how.”  He took the instrument from Hinpoha’s unwilling hand, and turning it wrong way up, proceeded to scrape back and forth.  At the third stroke it went too far, and gouged out a deep scratch right through the design, clear across the whole side of the vase.

“Ah, a little scratch,” he remarked airily.  “Ah, sorry, really, very.  But it can soon be remedied.  A little dob of clay, now.”

“Let me fix it myself,” said Hinpoha firmly, with difficulty keeping her exasperation under the surface, and without more ado seized her mutilated treasure from his hands.

“Ah, yes, of course,” murmured Monty, and wandered on to the next table.

By the time the day was over Cousin Monty was about as popular as a hornet.  “How long is he going to stay?” the girls asked each other in comical dismay.  “A week?  Oh, my gracious, how can we ever stand him around here a week?”

“Is he going along with us on the canoe trip?” Katherine asked Miss Judy as she helped her check over supplies for the expedition.

“He is that,” replied Miss Judy.  “He’s going along to pester us just as he has been doing—­probably worse, because he’s had a night to think up a whole lot more fool questions to ask than he could think of yesterday.”

And it was even so.  Monty, notebook in hand, insisted upon knowing the why and wherefore of every move each one of the girls made until they began to flee at his approach.  “Why are you tying up your ponchos that way?  That isn’t the way.  Now if you will just let me show you—­”

“Why you are putting that stout girl”—­indicating Bengal—­“in the stern of the canoe?  You want the weight up front—­that’s the newest way.”