“What would you do, Bumpus,” said Step Hen, after a while, “if you couldn’t find a creek to wade in, with the fire all around you?”
“Well, d’ye know, I was just athinkin’ about that same thing,” replied the fat scout, who had thrown a blanket around him, and not bothered dressing; and as he sat there on a log he looked somewhat like a lazy Indian.
“I hope you came to some conclusion,” observed Giraffe; “because, if we happen to run across a conflagration to-morrow, when we’re out hunting, it’ll be some comfort to me to know, when I’m spinning along, that you’re snug and safe behind, and not being devoured by the flames.”
“Well, the only thing I could think of,” Bumpus went on, soberly; “seeing that a feller can’t sprout wings right away when he needs the same; nor hatch up an aeroplane to carry him out of the danger zone–the only thing for me to do would be to hunt around for a woodchuck’s hole, and push in, feet first.”
There was a laugh at that remark, which seemed to surprise Bumpus, for he looked with elevated eyebrows at each of the others in turn.
“You seem to think I’m joking,” he remarked, as if offended by the levity.
“Well,” continued Giraffe, “in the first place you’d possibly find a heap of trouble discovering a woodchuck’s hole in these Maine woods, especially when you were in a big hurry; and then again, fancy the kind of woodchuck that had a hole of a size to accommodate you, Bumpus Hawtree!”
The fat boy sighed.
“That’s what I get all along the line,” he declared. “There ain’t no place in all this world for a feller that’s nearly as round as he is tall. I tell you I’m goin’ to find some way of getting rid of all this superabundance of flesh, if I have to walk it off by taking tremendous tramps. Some people tell me it c’n be done by going hungry a week or two at a time; but what’s the use of living if you can’t eat, that’s what? So I’m in a peck of trouble. Won’t somebody tell me what to do?”
Of course, with such an open invitation, they hastened to accomodate him; and if poor Bumpus tried even a part of the numerous joking plans offered for his consideration, he would soon have no need for either food or energy, since they would, as he declared, be “putting his wooden overcoat on him.”