Kate grinned . `` I do n't care what I look like , '' she said , `` but I feel wretchedly unpleasant . This water is simply swarming with wigglers . '' `` Goodness , what are they ? '' I exclaimed . `` Oh , they 're tiny little things like leeches , '' responded Kate . `` I believe they develop into mosquitoes later on , bad ` cess to them . What Mr. Nash would call my pedal extremities are simply being devoured by the brutes . Ugh ! I believe the bottom of this creek is all soft mud . We may have to drive -- no , as I 'm a living , wiggler-haunted human being , here 's firm bottom . Hurrah , Phil , we 're all right ! '' In a few minutes we were past the creek and bowling merrily on our way . We had a beautiful camping ground that night -- a fairylike little slope of white poplars with a blue lake at its foot . When the sun went down a milk-white mist hung over the prairie , with a young moon kissing it . We boiled some slices of our jumping deer and ate them in the open around a cheery camp-fire . Then we sought our humble couches , where we slept the sleep of just people who had been driving over the prairie all day . Once in the night I wakened . It was very dark . The unearthly stillness of a great prairie was all around me .
In that vast silence Kate 's soft breathing at my side seemed an intrusion XXXXX sound where no sound should be .
In around as at like of on over past to