“This,” said Mr. Gifford, “is the dining-hall. The fellows call it the Grubbery. There are four tables, you see. The Chief sits at the head of this one and the rest of us fellows take the others. That doesn’t leave one for you, though, does it? Guess the Chief will put you at the foot of his. The fellows take turns at setting the tables and clearing them. We have a splendid cook and plenty of good things to eat. You won’t go hungry, Craig. Speaking of that——”
Mr. Gifford led the way across the hall and through a swinging door into a kitchen. Sam followed and was introduced to the cook, one Cady Betts, a tall, fair-complexioned French-Canadian whom the boys, as Sam discovered later, called “Kitty-Bett.”
“Cady,” said Mr. Gifford, “we’re starved. Got anything to eat?”
The cook, who had been stocking the shelves with the supplies which had reached camp a little while before, smiled doubtfully.
“There is nothing cook,” he said in his careful English, “but there is crackers and cheeses. Maybe you like them?”
Mr. Gifford declared that he did and, assisted moderately by Sam, consumed a large quantity of each, sitting on the kitchen table and chatting the while with “Kitty-Bett.” The latter, Sam learned by listening, came from Michigan and in winter cooked for a big lumber company. He had a pair of the mildest, softest blue eyes Sam had ever seen in a man, and a pleasant smile, but one had only to watch him handle the cans and bags and jugs for a minute to see that he was as deft and quick as he was amiable. Presently Mr. Gifford conducted Sam back through the dining-hall again, pointing out the mail box which hung just inside the doorway. All the doors at the camp were double and swung outward, and, as Sam found in the course of time, were seldom ever closed. Eating in the dining-hall was much like eating out of doors, for, besides the big doorway and a shuttered opening at the front, the two sides of the building from three feet above the floor to the eaves opened out and up, admitting light and air and, it must be confessed, not a few flies!
There was an ice-house behind the kitchen, with a storage space in front for meats and eggs and milk and vegetables, a place whose temperature was most grateful after the warmth outside. From there they walked down to the landing. Here lay quite a flotilla of row-boats and canoes, which a tow-headed youth named Jerry—if he had another name Sam never learned it—was engaged in painting and varnishing. Jerry was a sort of general factotum; carried the mail across the lake once a day in the little naphtha launch, which had not yet been slid out of the small boat-house nearby, washed dishes after meals, pared potatoes, ran errands, and performed a dozen other duties. Mr. Gifford shook hands with Jerry and formally presented Sam. Jerry observed, with a shy smile, that he was “pleased to meet you, sir.”
On the float, which was quite large, there was a springboard and a slide; also a covered box which held oars and oar-locks and canoe paddles, and had a life-belt hung at one end. There was not much of a beach there, for shore and lake met sharply. There was, however, Mr. Gifford explained, a fairly good stretch of sand further along, near the ball-field, which the older boys were allowed to go in from occasionally.
“About the first thing a boy has to do when he gets here,” said Mr. Gifford, “is learn to swim. We put them all into the water twice a day, and those who want to may duck before breakfast. It generally takes only about a month to get the most backward youngsters to a point where they can keep afloat. They usually do their best to learn quickly because we don’t allow them in the boats until they have; and it seems to be every boy’s ambition to spend half his life in a canoe! I suppose you can manage a boat, Craig?”