Chapter XVII.
THE BREAKING UP OF THE ICE.
Breakfast was late the next morning, for Katy proposed to vary their fare by frying some snow-birds with bacon, and Jim was called upon to help pluck and prepare them—work which did not please that young gentleman very much.
"I suppose now we shall have nothing but snow-birds, snow-birds," he growled.
"Do try and be a little more cheerful, Jim," said Katy. "You are always grumbling about something."
"What else do you want?" asked Tug. "You have got beef, though it's dried, and bacon and poultry."
"Flesh, fowl, and good red herring," quoted Aleck, from an old proverb.
"All but the herring," grunted The Youngster, crossly. "Now if only we had some fish—"
"Fish!" Tug shouted, leaping to his feet. "Never thought of it, as I'm a Dutchman! Why shouldn't we? We have only got to cut a hole in the ice, and 'drop 'em a line,' as the man told his wife to do when he went off to Californy."