"Dey's cookin' hit!" said Aunt Fanny solemnly.
"Good heaven, no!" cried Beverly. "Go and see, this minute. I wouldn't eat that catlike thing for the whole world." Aunt Fanny came back a few minutes later with the assurance that they were roasting goat meat. The skin of the midnight visitor was stretched upon the ground not far away.
"And how is he?" asked Beverly, jamming a hat pin through a helpless bunch of violets.
"He's ve'y 'spectably skun, yo' highness."
"I don't mean the animal, stupid."
"Yo' mean 'at Misteh Goat man? He's settin' up an' chattin' as if nothin' happened. He says to me 'at we staht on ouah way jes' as soon as yo' all eats yo' b'eakfus'. De bosses is hitched up an'—"
"Has everybody else eaten? Am I the only one that hasn't?" cried Beverly.
"'Ceptin' me, yo' highness. Ah'm as hungry as a poah man's dawg, an'—"
"And he is being kept from the hospital because I am a lazy, good-for-nothing little—Come on, Aunt Fanny; we haven't a minute to spare. If he looks very ill, we do without breakfast."
But Baldos was the most cheerful man in the party. He was sitting with his back against a tree, his right arm in a sling of woven reeds, his black patch set upon the proper eye.