Ben pointed to the provisions spread on a cloth lying on the turf.
“Hungry?” he asked. “You seem to me to look rather lank!”
“I bet you don’t shake your head at that, and chatter out that everlasting ‘No can do’,” Carl laughed. “Fall to, friend!” he added.
The Chinaman quickly accepted this invitation, and was soon devouring bread and butter, tinned meats, and vegetables, as if he had eaten nothing before for a week. The boys watched laughingly.
“We’re next to you!” Carl cried. “You came to visit on purpose to get a good feed! Look here!” he added as the Chinaman looked up with a submissive grin, “what did those fellows tie you up for?”
“No can do!” answered the Chinaman. “No can do.”
“Go to it!” exclaimed Ben. “Put a couple of pounds of groceries under your belt at our expense and then you may be able to talk United States.”
“No can do,” was the only answer received to this suggestion.
Watching the man critically as he ate the provisions with all the gusto of one near to the point of starvation, Ben thought he saw indications of a different sort of a life in his manner of handling his food.
The fellow’s face expressed only stupidity. His eyes were dull and staring, but the manner in which he brought the food to his mouth was not that of a man who had been trained to eat with chopsticks.