'Surely; every man that has eyes is welcome to use 'em,' replied the backwoodsman bluntly. 'We ain't got no manners in the bush, nor don't want 'em, as I tell Mary here, when she talks any palaver. Now, wife, them pritters must be done;' and he left his seat on the table to pry over her pan.
'Then take the cakes out of the bake-kettle, will you?' said Mary; 'and if them ducks be raw, 'tain't my fault, remember.' She was evidently a woman of few words, but trenchant.
Thus warned, her husband did not press the point, but took the stewing fowl under his own care, displaying a practical experience of cookery won in many a day of bush life.
'These duck was shot on your pond, stranger; if you be a good hand with the gun, you'll never want for fresh meat while that water holds together. The finest maskelonge and pickerel I ever see was hooked out of it.'
Arthur's face brightened; for the sportsman instinct was strong in him, and he had been disappointed hitherto by finding the woods along their track empty of game.
''Cos the critters have more sense than to wait by the road to be shot,' explained the backwoodsman, as he dished up his stew—a sort of hodgepodge of wild-fowl, the theory of which would have horrified an epicure; but the practical effect was most savoury.
Now the boy Benny had never in his small life seen any edifice nobler than a loghouse on the ground-floor; and the upper storey which Mr. Callaghan had built with his chips seemed to him as queer a phenomenon as a man having two heads.
'Well, only think of that!' exclaimed Andy; 'the boy doesn't know what a stairs is.'
'And how should he?' asked the father, rather sharply. 'He ha'n't seen nothin' but the bush. One time I took him to Greenock, and he couldn't stop wonderin' what med all the houses come together. For all that, he ha'n't a bad notion of chopping, and can drive a span of oxen, and is growin' up as hardy as my rifle—eh, Benny?'
'He cut all the wood I wanted while you were away last time, Peter,' chimed in the mother. So the strangers saw that the principle which leads parents to bore their unoffending visitors with copybooks and the 'Battle of Prague,' is applicable to backwood accomplishments also.