“Going to have a feast?” asked Blake.
“A feast? no,” replied Alice, who was scooping out the dirt. “Why do you ask?”
“Because you’re digging a hole, and you have a lot of clay around. I thought maybe you were going to clay a chicken.”
“Clay a chicken?” repeated Mrs. Bonnell. “Is that a new way of serving it?”
“It’s the camp version of a casserole,” explained Jack. “You take a chicken, wrap a cloth around it, and then plaster it all over with clay. Then you make a fire in a hole, put the clayed chicken in, cover it with embers, and go fishing.”
“What has fishing got to do with it?” asked Mabel.
“You don’t have to think any more about your dinner,” said Jack. “It’s like a fireless cooker, with the fire still in it. The clay bakes hard you see, and the heat cooks the chicken through and through. When you come back you take out the clay ball with the chicken for a center, crack it open, and you dine sumptuously. That’s a clayed-chicken.”
“It sounds good,” said Natalie.
“It is good,” declared Blake. “If you can get a chicken over at the store, we’ll fix it for you.”
The girls voted to do so, and after putting the clay vases in the firing pit, and having told the boys of the scare of the night, they prepared for the trip after supplies.