“Of course it is long after the usual supper hour,” smiled the doctor, “but go over to the dining-room, find the housekeeper and tell her I want her to give you the very best meal she knows how to get up.”
There was no need of a second injunction, and the boys wished the head of the school good-night and were off to hunt up the housekeeper.
“Isn’t the doctor a brick?” ejaculated Mouser. “I thought he’d keep us there half an hour or more talking about the work for the coming term and what he would expect of us.”
“That’ll come later,” said Fred. “Just now he knew that we were hungry.”
“That’s what makes him such a bully sort,” said Bobby. “He hasn’t forgotten that he was once a boy himself,” he added, with a happy sigh.
And this, perhaps, was as high tribute as could be paid by one of his pupils to the master of Rockledge School.
CHAPTER XI
TOM HICKSLEY REAPPEARS
The housekeeper carried out the principal’s order to the letter. And she did it with the better grace because she herself was fond of the boys. She bustled about and in a very short time, which seemed long enough, however, to the hungry boys, had a smoking hot meal on the table. The boys gathered around and pitched into the good things like so many hungry wolves, while the housekeeper watched them with a genial smile on her good-natured face.
“Some feed,” pronounced Fred, with a sigh of satisfaction, when at last they were through.
“We’ve had a tough day in some ways,” declared Pee Wee, “but a mighty lucky one in another. Just think of the three cooks we’ve come up against. Meena for breakfast, Mrs. Wilson for dinner, and Mary here for supper. Yum-yum!”