A stare of dismay from the entire hungry party followed this announcement. It looked like no supper—after a hard day's work! Worse still, to Addison and myself it looked like the crippling of our whole program for the next five days; for a lumber crew is much like an army; it lives and works only by virtue of its commissariat.
But now Aunt Olive rose to the emergency. "Don't you be discouraged, boys!" she exclaimed. "Give me twenty minutes, and you shall have a supper fit for a king. You shall have white monkey on toast! Toast thirty or forty slices of this bread, boys," she added, laughing cheerily. "Toast it good and brown, while I dress the monkey!"
Addison, Thomas and I began toasting bread over the hot stove, but kept a curious eye out for that "white monkey."
Of course it was figurative monkey. Aunt Olive put six quarts of milk in a kettle on the stove, and as it warmed, thickened it slightly with about a pint of corn-meal.
As it grew hotter, she melted into it a square of butter about half the size of a brick, then chipped up fine as much as a pound of cheese, and added that slowly, so as to dissolve it.
Last, she rapidly broke, beat and added a dozen eggs, then finished off with salt and a tiny bit of Cayenne pepper, well stirred in.
For five minutes longer she allowed the kettleful to simmer on the stove, while we buttered three huge stacks of toast.
The monkey was then ready. All hands gathered round with their plates, and in turn had four slices of toast, one after another, each slice with a generous ladleful of white monkey poured over it.
It was delicious, very satisfying, too, and gave one the sense of being well fed, since it contained all the ingredients of substantial food. As made by Aunt Olive, this white monkey had the consistency of moderately thick cream. It slightly resembled Welsh rabbit, but we found it was much more palatable and whole-some, having more milk and egg in it, and far less cheese.
We liked it so well that we all wanted it for breakfast the next morning—and that was fortunate, since we had little else, and were exceedingly loath to lose a day's time sending teams down home, or elsewhere, for more meat, beans and potatoes.