"Hello, old man, awake at last," laughed Kendall. "Well, you better get up and dress, or we 're apt to miss our breakfast. How did you sleep? All right, I hope; you look as fresh as a mountain daisy."
Checkers crawled slowly out of bed. "Well, then my looks are a horrible bluff," he said, with the slight, sardonic smile which was usual to him at nearly all times. "I feel like the last end of a misspent life," and he fished a sock out from under the bed. "Do you know," he continued, as he held his shirt aloft, preparatory to putting it on, "it's wonderful how a fellow's early training comes back to him later in life. I recollect my mother used to read a psalm about not being 'afraid of the terror by night, nor the pestilence that walketh in darkness.' Now, somehow, it never struck me before, but I 'll bet the party that wrote the verse never slept in an Arkansas hotel bed. If he did, he had on his tin pajamas, or else he could beat 'the pestilence' walking. Say, where on earth is my other sock? I'll gamble that one of them pinchin'-bugs pinched it?" and Checkers kept up a running fire of quaint remarks while Kendall laughed.
Their breakfast was a culinary horror.
"Have you got any capsules?" asked Checkers of the waitress.
"Capsules!"
"Yes, I'll have to have some, if I take this butter internally." A kick under the table from Arthur put an end to further persiflage.
A two-seated spring wagon, known locally as a "hack," with two sturdy horses and a driver stood waiting for them. Arthur had sent out and ordered it before breakfast, and his telescope bag and Checkers' trunk he had caused to be firmly strapped into the end.
The day was a typically beautiful one. The clear and bracing morning air had in it just enough of a chill to make the sunshine grateful to them, as they drove along the winding road, toward the mountainous country lying beyond them.
Checkers' blues had disappeared with the vapors of the night before, and he felt the exultation of a new and pleasant experience. Arthur was in an easy humor, and described at considerable length to Checkers his family and their circumstances.
Some ten years back his father had moved from Massachusetts to that locality at the advice of his doctor. He had bronchial trouble, and he found the thin, clear air of the Ozarks beneficial. Mrs. Kendall was long since dead, and Arthur had been an only child. Besides these two there were in the household Aunt Deb, who was a sister of Mr. Kendall's, and "Cynthy," the cook, and maid of all work. There was also a good-natured creature named Tobe, half-witted and harmless, attached to the family, who did odd jobs for his board and keep, and had constituted himself a fixture.