“Aye, aye, sir,” responded Eric, touching his cap with mock deference.
“You just do that again!” said Fritz, threatening him in a joking way.
“Or, what?” asked the other, jumping out of his reach in make-believe terror.
“I’ll eat your share of this nice supper as well as mine.”
“Oh, a truce then,” cried Eric, laughing and coming back to his brother’s side; when the two, sitting down in the hut, whose interior now looked very comfortable with the lamp lit, they proceeded to demolish the roast fowl and piece of salt pork which Captain Brown had directed the steward to put into a basket for them, so that they should be saved the trouble of cooking for themselves the first day of their sojourn on the island, as well as enjoy a savoury little repast in their early experience of solitude.
“I say,” remarked Eric, with his mouth full. “This is jolly, ain’t it!”
“Yes, pretty well for a first start at our new life,” replied Fritz, eating away with equal gusto. “I only hope that we’ll get on as favourably later on.”
“I hope so, too, brother,” responded the other. “There’s no harm in wishing that, is there?”
“No,” said Fritz. “But, remember, the garden to-morrow.”
“I shan’t forget again, old fellow, with you to jog my memory!”