“The girls next to me,” replied the councillor. “Two serve for three meals, then two others the next day, and so on, moving around the table.” Little girls, as little used to responsibility as Cathalina had been, took hold as cheerfully as could be, and brought in plates of bread and butter, pitchers of milk, dishes of steaming potatoes or platters of well-browned fish.
“Did you see the big fish?” asked one of the girls.
“No; what fish?”
“There was a four hundred-pound sturgeon caught up the river.”
“Four hundred pounds! You are joking.”
“No, indeed. We asked how they got it into the boat, and they said it was just like a log, too heavy to fight. They cut it up and shipped it to Bath in a barrel!”
“What a fish story!”
“No, honest, some people that live on the river caught it.”
“Ting-a-ling,” the bell at the head councillor’s table. First a bird hike was announced for an early hour the next morning, the bell to ring at a quarter to six. Our Greycliff quartet especially gave attention to this and nodded at each other as members of the Greycliff bird club.
The next announcement created universal joy and was to the effect that the Aeolus and Truant would take out the campers for a ride on the river and that the girls who had been at Merrymeeting before and could paddle might take out the war canoe. There was great applause and a hurrying on the part of the experienced paddlers to select paddles and run or slide down to the dock.