Happy Mrs. Burnham seconded the request:
“Yes, come to supper, everybody! After that for a nice long talk, and everything told that’s befallen you from the moment you left us till this. But, Jack? Why, where’s Jack?”
He came, slipping and sliding down the steep behind the little clearing where they had pitched their tent, and where the white “schooner” now did duty as storehouse and general utility apartment.
“Hello! Master-cut-and-come-again! So you’re back? Well, I’m glad of it. Need you to help forage. Never saw such appetites as my relatives have. Father spends his time tapping and digging around in the ground, and the cares of providing fresh ‘butcher’s meat,’ fresh fish, fresh fruit, fresh water, fresh everything—devolves upon yours truly. Say, I wish you’d sell me that lasso of yours. I need it. Honor bright. What’ll you take? Oh, Carlota? You here? Howdy.”
The overjoyed lad affected his usual indifference, yet, as he threw upon the ground before them the results of his afternoon with the rod and line, and his father’s second-hand shot-gun, his honest pride made his homely features good to see.
“Where’s my Dennis?” suddenly demanded Teddy.
“Coming, yonder. Run and meet him and tell him how glad you are to have him back,” suggested Carlota.
Without comment, Teddy obeyed, and promptly brought the last member of the party to enjoy that famous supper. Nor, though they sat late around the camp-fire, exchanging confidences, did anybody mention the possibility of “dying.”
CHAPTER XXX
THE BLUE FLOWER AND THE BLACK ROCK
“Yes, go, my dear, I don’t want you to sit here alone, so constantly, or so continually to toil for somebody. Oh! you precious comfort! I should have died here, in the wilderness, but for your tender care!”