AT BREAKFAST
The day was dawning by this time, and the conversation was broken up. Constant set to work to prepare breakfast while the others extinguished the lanterns, trimmed them, filled them with oil, and “cleaned up” generally.
When breakfast was served, the scarcity of supplies was apparent. There were some “cold-water hoecakes,”—that is to say, bread made of corn-meal mixed up with cold water and a little salt, and baked in cakes about half or three quarters of an inch thick upon a griddle. There was a dish of fried salt pork, and with it some fried potatoes. And there was nothing else, except a “private dish” consisting of two slices of toast made from the scrap of stale wheat bread left, with a poached egg on each of them. There was no coffee and no butter, the last remains of that having been used upon the toast.
The “private dish,” Constant explained, was for Ed. “You see, we’re out to get him well, and his digestive apparatus doesn’t take kindly to fried things. I’ve saved four more eggs for him—the last we’ve got,—and six more slices of stale wheat bread. The rest of you are barbarians, and you’ll wrestle with any sort of hash I can get up till we get to Memphis.”
Ed protested vigorously against the favoritism shown him, but the others supported Constant’s plan, and the older boy had to yield.
“Well, I am deeply grateful for your kindness, boys,” he said, “and I’m duly grateful also to the thousands of men in various parts of the country who have worked so hard to furnish me with these two slices of toast.”
The boys looked up from their plates.
“Here’s another revelation,” said Irv. “My ill-furnished intelligence is about to receive another supply of much-needed rudimentary information. Go on, Ed. Tell us about it. How in the world do you figure out your ‘thousands’ of men who have had anything to do with those two slices of toast?”