His hand on the door, he smiled down at Bridie. “Wait till you see the prices here, Bridie, my girl. You’ll probably give a lecture yourself.”

Every stool at the U-shaped double counter in the Farthest North Lunchroom was occupied by men and women and children, white and brown, all eating with happy concentration like little boys and girls at a party. Rows of parkas hung from hooks on the wall. The aroma of ham and steaks frying, of coffee and fresh warm bread, enveloped the three like an actual substance as they entered the hot bright room. The Roller Polars together with the Company guide were seated at the farther side of the counter, they were eating steaks, everybody, Eskimo and white, seemed to be eating steaks, the Eskimo faces were blissful. A menu chalked on the wall blackboard read: Sirloin beefsteaks in today $10. There was no vacant seat.

“Hi!” the Polars called, gaily. The three nodded and smiled, everyone in the lunchroom nodded and smiled—all except three small children seated side by side at the curved end of the counter nearest the door. Two small boys and a girl, perhaps eight, nine, and ten. They regarded the newcomers gravely, eating the while, they studied Bridie’s hat coat gloves bag blue-white hair make-up with utter concentration and gravity, but a gleam in the older boys’ eyes. They were consuming lemon pie and soda pop. The older boy finished, and now in his hand he waved a five-dollar bill idly to and fro.

“Civilization,” Thor said.

A plump and pretty Eskimo waitress in a white nylon uniform came down the inside length of the counter, her arms hugging four loaves of freshly baked white bread, the scent was fragrant as flowers. She plumped them down and reached below the counter for a paper sack into which she deftly slid the warm loaves.

“You children finished,” she said, “you run along home now. Your mother wants this bread.” The two younger ones swigged the remaining soda pop, tiptilting their heads and the bottles. The boy gave her the five-dollar bill, they slid off the stools, their faces flashed into animation as they suddenly smiled at the three waiting adults. They were off, closing the door quietly behind them.

“White bread,” Thor groaned in a tone that seemed sepulchral out of all proportion to his subject. “White bread made with processed flour, it doesn’t matter how good it smells; and lemon pie, cornstarch-filled, and soda pop. For thousands of years they’ve survived and been nourished by seal oil and fat fish and whale meat and caribou and tundra greens. A triumph of survival over the most terrible climate in the Arctic. And now the children eat white bread and lemon—–”

“Grampa dear,” Chris said. She put her hand on his arm. “Grampa dear.”

“I’ll treat everybody to steaks,” Bridie announced.

His tone was gentle, his eyes quizzical. “I’m solvent, Bridie. And maybe these restaurant folks will take an ad in the Northern Light to attract the tourist trade. You’re a fine independent woman, Bridie, but you mustn’t take his manhood rights away from a man. Maybe that’s why you and I never married.”