Soon, the call to dinner was heard, and the boys all gathered around the table, chattering like magpies.
“It seems as if we’d always camped here,” said Shorty. “There’s something about the place that makes you feel at home right away.”
“It’s the classiest place I’ve ever been in,” Dave Ferris declared, enthusiastically. “It makes you imagine that Nature might have had a little time on her hands and devoted it to making this one spot a little paradise.”
“Hear! Hear!” Tom cried, clapping his hands in mock praise. “Dave will be a poet if he doesn’t look out. Give us some more, old man, the sample’s good.”
“You’d better be careful how you
“‘Beard the lion in his den
The Ferris in his hall,’”
said Dick Trent, warningly. “He won’t favor us with any more stories if you are not careful how you offend him.”
“I’d just as soon he’d spout all the poetry he wants to if it relieves him any, as long as he doesn’t forget how to tell stories,” Shorty remarked as he contentedly munched a piece of toast.
“How very kind of you,” said Dave, sarcastically. “I thank you with all my heart for your liberality.”
“My which? Say, Dave, if that ever belonged to me, I call you all to witness that I disown it from this time on. It’s no friend of mine from this time on.”