"The trout are ready, Ben," said Adam, "and everything else, too, I guess."
With running and laughter the children were soon about the fire, eating their last delicious out-of-door dinner.
XVI
EYES AND NO EYES
The evening party at Ben Gile's cabin was to be the last of all the beautiful summer, for the next day Betty and Jimmie were to leave with their mother for the city, and this was the evening which was to decide who was to receive the prize.
Betty had been working very hard for it, and wanted it. But Jimmie couldn't see any use in lying with your nose on an ant-hill. As for Peter, he giggled whenever ants were mentioned to him, and seemed not to care much one way or another. Hope, however, was often with Betty, and the two girls, flat on the grass, tried to discover as many mysteries as they could about the busy little fellows. As for Jack, he was as busy as the ants, following them about, lying quietly for hours, and borrowing any book he could find that would tell about them. It seemed to him that if he could have that magnifying-glass, that book of colored plates, and the five-dollar gold piece, he would be the richest boy in all the world! He thought about it by night and by day, and he was certain that with the insect book and the glass, he should discover things nobody else in the world had ever seen.
The poor boy was trembling with eagerness on this evening of the party at the guide's cabin. The children took their turn in telling what they knew. Peter giggled, and said they seemed to lug a good deal of food. Jimmie said they ran in and out of their ant hills very fast, and knew how to build big hills. Hope was so frightened that, when it came her turn, the child could not tell even the little she knew.
But Betty, who loved everything in the out-of-door world, forgot herself and her fright in the true love which she had for natural history. She said she had spent hours in a neighborhood of ants, near the doorways they had in the ground. Some of the doorways were large, and some were small, and the little ants who went in and out of the doors carried off the pieces of cake she fed to them. Sometimes the crumbs were three or four times as big as the ants. She had seen two little ants attack a large piece of cake, but it proved too much for them, so one mounted guard over it while the other scurried off. In a few moments it came back with a whole squad of ants, who surrounded the cake and pushed and pulled with all their might. They actually got it to the door, Betty said, and after that she could see it no more. Then Betty spoke a little wistfully: "If only I had been an ant I could have gone down after it. I could have seen what they did with it, sir."