The big basket was uncovered and there lay revealed to the eyes of the delighted boys a number of large loaves of delicious homemade bread. One did not need to taste that bread to know its value. The firm white loaves spoke for themselves. Corn bread they had in plenty every day, but white wheat flour bread was not included in their regular camp rations, so that this was indeed a treat. They were all devouring it already in imagination, and each wished it were morning so that they might begin in reality.
Kitty departed amid “Good nights” and hearty thanks to her mother, and, camp bed time having arrived, all drifted toward their tents, Tom gaily singing:
“‘Tis a name
That no shame
Has iver been connected with
Harrigan! That’s me.”
All at once some one shouted: “Look at Ben Cooper.” They turned to see Ben standing like a statue, eyes fixed on nothing, staring straight ahead of him.
“Say, fellows,” said he, “that bread that we cast on the waters on our way home from the doctor’s the other day sure did come back, didn’t it?”
“It certainly did and it didn’t take ‘many days’ either to get here,” said Tom.
“And,” chimed in Shorty, “a big bunch of red roses thrown in, too.”
“Yes, Caruso,” added Bert, throwing his arm affectionately over Phil’s shoulder, “you must be a prophet as well as a singer.”
Very soon the tired boys were off to dreamland, where visions of loaves of fluffy white bread, each loaf with a red rose growing out of it, floated about, and imaginative Dave dreamed that old Biddy made a “prisint” of a loaf to each one, singing in a high cracked voice as she handed them around: “Harrigan! That’s me!”