“Then you can help me get dinner,” suggested Bob.
“Dinner!” cried Ned. “Why, we just had breakfast!”
“Huh! That was an hour ago!” declared Bob. “You’ve got to plan dinner ahead, I guess. If I’m going to be cook I want to know what I’ve got to get ready.”
“Go ahead and be cook,” granted Ned. “Nobody wants your job, Chunky.”
“I’ll help,” volunteered Andy, and the two were soon busy calculating what sort of a meal to serve. It would be the first one aboard the boat that trip.
Their craft had been stored, for the remainder of the night following the fire, at a house farther up the river than the destroyed lumber yard. And now, as they steamed past it, they saw men at work, trying to see if anything had been saved from the flames. Some of the piles were still smouldering, and on these the firemen were playing streams of water.
“That was a lucky escape for us,” Jerry reminded his chums.
“It sure was,” they agreed.
The weather was fine, their boat was running to perfection, there was plenty to eat aboard, and the boys could enjoy their vacation to the full. The only matter that worried Jerry was the financial status of his mother. And that could not be helped—at least just at present.
“But if we can get back that swamp land, and work the yellow clay deposits ourselves,” mused the tall lad, “it will make a big difference. I can’t understand Professor Snodgrass. It doesn’t seem possible that he would go back on us that way, and yet he did. But, as mother says, I’ll give him a ‘show for his white alley.’”