"Gee," yawned the youngest of the three, stretching out lazily. "Isn't it nearly twelve o'clock? I wonder when that dusky gentleman will come along with the call to dinner."
"Always hungry," laughed one of the others. "The rest of us eat to live, but Tom lives to eat."
"You've struck it there, Dick," assented the third. "You know they say that no one has ever been able to eat a quail a day for thirty days hand running, but I'd be willing to back Tom to do it."
"Well, I wouldn't quail at the prospect," began Tom complacently, and then ducked as Dick made a pass at him.
"Even at that, I haven't got anything on you fellows," he went on, in an aggrieved tone. "When you disciples of 'plain living and high thinking' get at the dinner table, I notice that it soon becomes a case of high living and plain thinking."
"Such low-brow insinuations deserve no answer," said Dick severely. "Anyway," consulting his watch, "it's only half-past eleven, so you'll have to curb the promptings of your grosser nature."
"No later than that?" groaned Tom. "I don't know when a morning has seemed so long in passing."
"It is a little slow. I suppose it's this blistering heat and the long distance between stations. It's about time something happened to break the monotony."
"Don't raise false hopes, Bert," said Tom, cynically. "Nothing ever happens nowadays."
"Oh, I don't know," laughed Bert. "How about the Mexican bandits and the Chinese pirates? Something certainly happened when we ran up against those rascals."