"What's this?" asked Mr. Black, holding up a flat, heavy parcel.
"A piece of bacon—I thought we might need bacon and eggs in addition to our salad—I brought a flat pan to fry them in. And here are salt and pepper."
"Well!" laughed Mr. Black, as parcel after parcel came out of the tightly packed hampers, "I guess we'll have to set up a grocery store and sell stuff to the squirrels—we can't possibly eat all this at one meal."
"Don't be too sure," warned Bettie. "I'm pretty hungry. Mother put in a can of cocoa and a little saucepan to cook it in—and here's a pint of milk."
"We'll make the cocoa and coffee," decided Mrs. Crane, "and eat the sandwiches and other ready-made things. We won't bother to do any other cooking; and, I must say, I'm glad we don't need to. I never was so hungry."
Everybody it seemed was on the verge of starvation. The Whale's passengers ate and ate and ate. Even Ambrosial Delight, the three-colored cat, drank milk as if he had always lived on the lake shore and dined from wooden plates. After dinner, every one, except Bettie, who was compelled by solicitous Mrs. Crane to curl up with the kitten under a tree for a nap, went exploring.
That was great fun, for exploring is interesting, anyway, even if you haven't anything bigger to explore than your own back yard. But when you have a whole wilderness, with a little of every kind of landscape there is dotted about, here and there; and always so unexpectedly that you don't know what you're coming to next, exploring becomes just the very jolliest pursuit there is.
In the first place, there was the large, grassy clearing where they had eaten dinner. This place was almost circular in shape and as big, Bettie said, as a whole city block. In it were a few scattered trees; but, for the greater part, it was open and almost perfectly level. On one side was the lake; the other three sides were walled in by most attractive forest.
A number of little trails led from the clearing into the woods. Each one, they found, pointed toward some definite object. One, for instance, carried them to a tiny spring of clear, gurgling water. Another led them to what was evidently a good fishing spot on the river. A third brought them to a tiny unsuspected lake, dotted with lily pads.