'How are you going to boil that, Dick, without burning a hole in the bottom?' asked Frank.
'By putting the fire inside instead of out, my lad,' replied he.
'Oh yes, old boy, I twig, and the soup outside instead of in!' cried Towzer. 'Quite simple, isn't it, Frank?'
Dick laughed. Towzer's cheek amused him.
'Here is my heating apparatus, anyway,' he said, raking some red-hot pebbles out of the ashes. 'Now you fill the bark-kettle with cold water.'
Towzer obeyed.
'Now, you see,' said Dick, suiting the action to the word, 'in go the pebbles and the water begins to sing; as soon as the first lot get dark and cool, out they come, and in goes another lot. If you pour the water over your toes by accident, you'll find it piping hot, I promise you; and when you've done doing that and can spare time to look at the bottom of the kettle, you'll find that it ain't got no hole in it.'
'Bully for you, Dick,' assented Towzer, 'your youth doesn't appear to have been as much wasted as I thought it had been.'
'Why don't you give the brat a taste of the lash-rope, Dick? it would do him a world of good.'
'I make a practice never to squash a 'skeeter as long as it only buzzes,' replied Wharton, laughing; 'when it stings, I'm theer, you bet.'