“Hungry, eh? I bet you. What’ll you eat? Will you have beefsteak, chicken-pie, strawberry short-cake, noodel soup, or bacon and eggs?” He reached around and scratched the back of his neck and winked one eye at the house. “If I was four boys with hollows into their stummicks I’d pick out bacon and eggs, I would. ’Cause why? ’Cause that’s what they’re goin’ to get. Now, each one of you take your choice.”
“N-n-name over those things again, please,” Mark asked him.
Uncle did it as patient as could be. Mark thought careful, going over every one in his mind, then, as solemn as a screech-owl, he says, “I guess b-b-bacon and eggs look best to me.”
Uncle nodded and looked at the rest of us. We spoke up for bacon and eggs right off without thinking over the other things, which seemed to satisfy Uncle Hieronymous all right.
“Will you have ’em baked, b’iled, fried, or stewed?”
“Fried, p-p-please,” says Mark. “Once on the top and once on the b-bottom.”
The rest of us took the same, and uncle went in to start a fire and begin his cooking. While he was at it we walked over to the little tumbledown barn off at a corner of the clearing. It looked as if something big and powerful had come along and given it a push, because it was all squee-geed. Boards were off, and what shingles were left stayed on the roof because they wanted to and not because they had to. Mark peeked inside.
“W-what’s that?” he wanted to know.
The rest of us crowded around and then pushed inside. It was pretty dim in there, but as soon as our eyes got used to it we could see a long white thing laying across the beams above our heads.
“Looks like a boat,” says I.