The boys fairly held their breath as the flutelike notes of one of the finest voices they had ever heard, floated off into the woodland spaces.
When he had finished, every one sat spellbound, paying the highest tribute of a moment of perfect silence. Even when the silence was broken by hearty hand clapping, the spell of the music still brooded over them. It had been too fine for noisy applause.
The boys’ appreciation of his singing was very grateful to Phil, and not the least tribute was Tom’s: “Gee, Phil, I hope the birds didn’t wake up to hear that. They would have been green with envy.”
The tension was broken by Sam’s asking: “What does that mean, ‘Cast thy bread upon the waters’—and how can it return?” Mr. Hollis was glad to explain that no kind deed or word is ever wasted, but is sure to return blessings on the one who gave it, if only in the glow that a kind action always brings.
But, uplifted as the boys had been, it is not in boy nature to stay long upon the heights and they soon came down to earth again.
Jim showed how fully he had come back to earth by remarking as he suddenly remembered that owing to a miscalculation as to the elastic nature of a boy’s capacity, both flour and corn meal had given out, and that in consequence, nothing in the shape of bread had come their way that night: “I wish some real bread were coming tomorrow. I am not particular about its coming by water. It can get here any old way, as long as it comes.”
The sound of someone approaching the camp aroused them. Irish Kitty appeared, with a big basket on one arm and a great bunch of red roses in her apron.
As soon as the boys saw the flowers, a shout went up: “Roses! roses! What beauties!” and on Kitty saying that she had counted them and there was one for each, they were seized upon and distributed in a twinkling.
Now, Kitty stated that she had a “prisint for the young gintlemin” from her mother, Mrs. Harrigan, “to thank thim for the foine illigant ride in the artymobile.”