“Sure,” said Dave, amid the laughter of the crowd. “Poor Ferdy! the whole world is against him!”
“You bet it is,” growled Ferd, picking himself up slowly at the bottom of the bank. “And it’s an awful hard world at that.”
“Come on! Come on!” whined Tubby Blaisdell. “Aren’t you ever going to get supper? You’re wasting time.”
Dave was expertly cleaning fish. Wyn ran to his help, finding the flour, cracker-crumbs, and salt pork. The pan was already heating over the blaze that the unfortunate Ferdinand had started in the fireplace.
“If you’re so blamed hungry,” said Dumont to the wailing Tubby, “start on the raw flour. It’s filling, I’ll be bound.”
“Say! I don’t just want to get filled. I want to enjoy what I eat. I could be another Nebuchadnezzar and eat grass, if it was just filling I wanted.”
“Ha!” cried Dave. “Tubby is as particular as the Western lawyer–a perfectly literal man–who entered a restaurant where the waiter came to him and said:
“‘What’ll you ’ave, sir? I ’ave frogs’ legs, deviled kidneys, pigs’ feet, and calves’ brains.’
“‘You look it,’ declared the lawyer man. ‘But what is that to me? I have come here to eat–don’t tell me your misfortunes.’”
Amid much laughter and chaffing they finally sat down to the fish-fry–and if there is anything more toothsome than perch, fresh from the water, and fried crisply in a pan with salt pork over the hot coals of a campfire, “the deponent knoweth not,” as Frank Cameron put it.