At that moment the wife of the settler, who called himself in red letters a hotel-keeper, came toward us with a large tin pot like a saucepan with a loose wire cross handle.
“Here’s a kettle,” she said, in rather an ill-used tone; “and there’s a tub o’ water for drinking outside. Got any tea?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Gunson, good-humouredly. “We shall do now.”
The woman left us, and Gunson turned to me.
“Well, squire,” he said, “what have you got in the commissariat department?”
“Some bread and cold ham,” I replied.
“Oh, but we must have some hot. I’ve done better than you,” he said, laughing, and taking out of a wallet a piece of raw bacon, which he laid upon the rough board table, and then a tin canister. “Now then, Esau, my lad, let’s see you cut that in slices, while I make some tea ready. Gordon, will you go and fill the kettle half full?”
He spoke so briskly and cheerily that I hardly knew the man again, and his words had so good an effect upon me, that I soon had the kettle filled and seated in the midst of the cheery blaze; while Esau was cutting up the bacon, and Gunson was heating and cleaning a bent gridiron, that had been made by binding some pieces of thick wire a little distance apart.
“Now then, Dean,” he said, “can you cook that bacon?”
Esau laughed scornfully.