At the tent Harry had the lunch spread and had lit their lantern.
“Do you know what time it is?” he asked. “It’s half-past eight. If we’d had any farther to go we’d have been in a fix. Is that all the water you could get? I’m dry as a desert.”
“I’ll get more after supper,” said John. “I’ve tumbled half over the pasture and I can’t find anything but bog-holes.”
A QUIET POND
After eating, both went out, Harry with the lantern, John with two pails. The clouds overhead had thinned and the stars twinkled through in places. The lantern with its two attendant figures went zigzagging over the lonely pasture waste to the water-hole. It had not yet cleared, but they skimmed off enough with a pail-cover to slake their thirst. They did not say much as they wended their way back to the tent, but both had the feeling that camping out was proving a rather severe experience of pioneering.
“I’m dead tired,” said Harry, as he flung himself down on the bedding inside. “Let’s turn in for the night.”
A few minutes later Farmer Whitcomb, glancing across the fields, saw the soft glow of the lantern through the canvas walls of the tent disappear, and remarked, “Well, they get to bed early for city folks, but I’ve always thought myself nine o’clock was about the right time.” He cleared his throat, looked up to the sky to get a hint of to-morrow’s weather prospects, and went in and locked the door. Soon his light, too, was out.
The last sound the campers heard was the wind fluttering through the beech leaves in the tree above. It was a great change from the city noises and surroundings with which they were familiar.
On the following morning the campers were out at sun-up. Harry went over to their particular mud-hole and succeeded in scooping up a pailful of water, but he had not gone five steps before his foot slipped on a dewy hummock and the pail went flying. He returned to the original source of water-supply, but there was no chance of getting more just then, and the result was he wended his way across the fields and filled his pail at the Whitcomb well-sweep.