Suddenly Cal put aside his playful manner of speech, and became thoroughly earnest.
“Think a minute, Larry. We have absolutely no official duty to do in this matter. We are doing our best as good citizens to notify the authorities. At present we can’t do it. There’s an end of that. We have a pleasant bivouac here, with plenty of food and more where it came from. Why shouldn’t we make the best of things and be happy? Why should you go brooding around, making the rest of us miserable? I tell you it’s nonsense. Cheer up, and give the rest of us a chance to enjoy ourselves.”
“You are right, Cal,” Larry answered; “and I won’t spoil sport. I didn’t mean to, and my worrying was foolish. By the way, what shall we do to pass the time to-day?”
“Well, for one thing, we ought to put up a shelter. A fog like this is very apt to end in soaking rain, and if it does that to-night, we’ll sleep more comfortably under a roof of palmete leaves than out in the open. However, there’s no hurry about that, and you can let Dick wallop you at chess for an hour or so while Tom and I go foraging. You see I’ve thought of a good many things that I ought to have bought last night, but didn’t. Do you want to go along, Tom?”
Tom did, and as they started away, Cal called back:
“I say, Larry, suppose you put on a kettle of rice to boil for dinner when the time comes. I think I’ll bring back something to eat with it.”
Then walking on with Tom by his side, he fell into his customary drawling, half-frivolous mode of speech. Tom had expressed his pleasure in the prospect of rice for dinner—rice cooked in the Carolina way, a dish he had never tasted before his present visit began.
“Yes,” answered Cal, “I was tenderly and affectionately thinking of you when I suggested the dish. And I had it in mind to make the occasion memorable in another way. I remember very vividly how greatly—I will not say greedily—you enjoyed the combination of rice and broiled spring chicken while we were in Charleston. I remember that at first you seemed disposed to scorn the rice under the mistaken impression that rice must always be the pasty, mush-like mess that they made of it at school. I remember how when I insisted upon filling your plate with it you contemplated it with surprise, and, contemplating, tasted the dainty result of proper cooking. After that all was plain sailing. I had only to place half a broiled chicken upon the rice foundation in your plate—half a chicken at a time I mean—and observe the gustatory delight with which you devoted yourself to our favorite Carolina dish.”
“Oh, well, your Carolina way of cooking it makes rice good even when you have no chicken to go with it. If the fog would thin itself down a bit—”