“Surely,” was the reply. “And have some coffee ready for me when I come back. Perhaps you can get a mess of fish. There’s the greatest salmon stream in the world, running along at your feet and making faces at you! But you must hurry up and get the food out of the boxes, all ready to carry down to the boat as soon as she is in the river.”
“I’ll get the breakfast,” Gran volunteered. “I used to know how to get up a swell dinner out of a cold potato and a sausage. If I’ve got to go down the river with you. I’ll work my passage as cook.”
Clay and Case looked up at Alex who stood grinning.
“It is all right,” the boy said. “I showed Gran that we would need his help, and he is too much of a gentleman to quit us. Get a square meal, now, Gran,” he continued, “and we’ll cut out the store and be getting the provisions out of the boxes. I guess we’ve got enough bacon and condensed milk here to feed an army for a month,” he added, ripping off the cover of a box and poking at the contents.
So Gran hastened into the cabin, from which the agreeable odor of frying bacon, bubbling coffee, and browning cakes soon came, making Case and Alex, still working at the boxes, hungrier than ever.
Before Clay returned, the strange boy appeared in the cabin door waving a pancake turner in his hand, a pleasant smile on his face.
The knowledge that he was really welcome to go with the boys and the prospect of making himself useful, had acted like a tonic, and from that moment he was, apparently, as full of life and as ready for any adventure that might come his way as were the others.
At times, however, he seemed sad and depressed, seeking solitude and, while always willing to do his share of the work, refusing to join in the by-play which his friends often indulged in. At such times the boys respected his mood and acted as if they did not notice it at all. From these moods of dejection, however, he soon emerged as bright and, apparently, as merry as the best of them.
“Dinner ready in the private diner!” he cried, swinging his turner at the boys. “The cakes are hot, the coffee is strong enough to lift the boat, and the bacon is crispy as a winter morning in little old Chicago.”
“It takes a cook to praise his own work!” laughed Case.