“This is fine,” said Tom Shealey. “We are in luck for sure.”
“I wonder where she has gone,” ventured Ernest Winters, in a whisper.
“Gone? Um! um! don't you know, youngster?" said Jack Beecham, with a shrug, and a stage whisper. He was a terrible tease. “Better keep your eyes on your skates and overcoat, Ernest. Of course she has gone to gather all the hired men on the farm who will soon be here to drive us off the premises. The ogre of this castle won't stand for any such invasion as ours. You can see it in her eye.”
But Ernest was not to be caught a second time.
“You can't fool me this time, mister. I think—but hush! here she comes.”
She came. With her came two of her maids bearing with them eatables—sweet homemade bread, apparently created to make a hungry schoolboy's mouth water, delicious pats of golden butter, red cheese, and an enormous pitcher of new milk—what a lunch for hungry boys!
“I am very glad you came,” again remarked the dear old lady. “To-day I give the farmhands and the dairy maids a sort of Christmas-week feast. It is a holiday in this house to-day. We don't have dinner to-day until after two o'clock, and as that is late and you must be hungry with your long walk already—- my! it's nigh onto eight miles to the big school, isn't it—you had just better take a snack before dinner-time. Come, sit up to the table, my dears; that is if you are warmed enough.”
The young fellows did not need a second invitation. Hunger is a good sauce. Growing boys are always hungry and the sweet, wholesome farmhouse fare was extremely enticing. Such butter! No oleomargarine there. Were it not, as mentioned before, that boys have a perpetual appetite, I am afraid that the amount of bread, cheese, butter, and milk disposed of would have seriously interfered with the enjoyment of the forthcoming dinner. At all events it wanted considerably over two hours to dinner-time.