“Shucks!” said Neale, washing his hands of the matter. “Give it to Tom Jonah, then. He’ll eat it raw—shell and all.”
“Oh, no,” said Tess, with sudden inspiration. “We must give it to Mrs. Heard for her breakfast. I’ll ask the blacksmith’s wife to cook it.”
That suited everybody and Tess and Dot ran to make the proper culinary arrangements for the wonderful egg laid on the automobile seat.
It was a very hilarious breakfast, indeed; and the older girls and Mrs. Heard thought the “automobile egg” quite wonderful indeed. And such a breakfast as it was—with eggs galore, and fried chicken, and hot bread, and honey from “Mother’s own combs.”
When Dot heard that, she was puzzled a good deal at first, for all the comb she had seen about the blacksmith’s wife was a high-backed, old-fashioned tortoise-shell comb that was prominent in the woman’s “bob” of hair. It had to be explained to the smallest Corner House girl what “honey from the comb” meant. All of that succulent dainty Dot had ever seen before had been strained honey.
The blacksmith’s wife put up a hamper of lunch for the automobile tourists, too, and when they drove away at nine o’clock the Corner House girls and their companions felt as though they were bidding good-bye to two old and valued friends. It did not seem possible that they had never met the jolly blacksmith and his kindly wife before the previous evening; and they promised to stop again, if only to call, on their return journey.
“I’m sure we shall never forget the dears,” Agnes sighed, some hours later, when they had stopped for lunch. “Just look at all this fried chicken!”
“We won’t forget ‘Mother’ while the grub holds out, that’s sure,” grinned Neale O’Neil.
“Horrid boy!” retorted Agnes. “We girls, I should hope, think of something besides our stomachs.”
“Hm—yes. But you weren’t talking about anything else,” rejoined Neale.