“Because,” says he, “we want to take up every m-minute of time we can. Every hour we save is in our f-favor. Here they’ve been half a d-day tryin’ to take this stairway. More’n that, I guess.” He took out his watch and looked at it. Then he wrinkled up his face and felt of his stomach. “Thought I felt sort of funny,” says he. “Know what t-time it is?”
“No,” says I.
“Three o’clock,” says he.
You can believe now that we had been having a pretty busy and exciting time. The best proof of it that I could give you was just this—that Mark Tidd forgot it was dinnertime. He had gone three hours past mealtime and never noticed it.
“I’m goin’ to eat,” says he, “Japs or no Japs.”
“Fetch down enough for the crowd,” says I.
He waddled up-stairs, and in ten minutes came back with two ham sandwiches for each of us. We had a whole boiled ham, and enough bread to run us. They were good, generous sandwiches with a slice of ham in them that you could taste when you bit, and mustard. When Mark Tidd fixed something to eat he fixed it so nobody in the world could complain, and so he couldn’t complain himself. There was as much difference between these sandwiches of his and the kind you buy as there is between getting hit with a hammer and getting hit with a feather. When the five of us got through there wasn’t a crum left that would pay for a bird’s time picking it up. Mark didn’t forget the dog, either, but gave him a bone.
“Wish I had a drink,” says I.
Mark looked at me and then at Plunk. “Water!” says he.
“Ain’t there none?” says Plunk.