“Yes, but what P.M.? What day is it? When did I go to sleep?”
The boys soon straightened things out in their captain’s temporarily bewildered mind. The effort to do so was aided by the sight and smell of a great platter which Ed at that moment set upon the table. It held a “boiled dinner.” There was a juicy brisket of corned beef on top. Under it were peeled and boiled potatoes, boiled turnips still retaining their shape, and beneath all was the last cabbage on board, the remains of a purchase made at Memphis a week or ten days before, though to the boys it seemed many moons past.
As Phil eyed the savory dish he became for the first time fully awake.
“I say, fellows,” he broke out, “what does this mean? Why didn’t you have this sort of thing for dinner instead of keeping it for supper?”
“Because you weren’t awake at dinner time to help us eat it, Phil. It’s the last really good meal we’re likely to see for days to come, and we—”
“You see,” broke in Irv Strong, “we’re bound to build you up again, Phil, if we have to do it with a hammer and nails. But how recklessly you expose your country breeding!” as he helped all round; “if you were captain of an ocean liner now instead of a flatboat, you would know that dinner before six o’clock is impossible to civilized man, and that the actual dinner hour in all those regions where dress coats and culture prevail, ranges from seven to eight o’clock.”
“You are unjust in your mockery, Irv,” said Ed. “And by that you in your turn simply expose your provincialism—and ours, too.”
“How?” asked Irv, chuckling to think that he had succeeded in diverting the conversation from channels in which it might easily have become emotional. For all the boys had been for hours under a strain of severe anxiety on Phil’s account. They were full of admiration for the self-sacrificing way in which he had worked and thought and planned for the common welfare. They had been touched to the heart by his exhaustion after his strenuous work was done, and they had been anxious all that afternoon, lest the breakdown of his strength should prove to be lasting. His appetite at supper relieved that fear, but the very relief made them all the more disposed to be a trifle tender toward him. Irv had prevented a scene, so he didn’t mind Ed’s criticism.
“How’s that, Ed?”
“Why, when you sneer at people because their customs are different from those that we are used to, don’t you see you are just as narrow-minded as they are when they sneer at us because our customs are not theirs.”