“Oh! I don’t know, Sim, why it doesn’t seem to strike me just right. Somehow, I seem to don’t care for it as much as I thought I would.”
“Why, it is the finest thing going,” urged Sim, “and here you act as if you thought it would jump right out of your plate at you!”
“Please don’t say anything more, Sim,” requested Tubby, looking a bit pale. So the subject was dropped, though Tubby failed to take another bite of his portion of “turtle fry.”
Rob had noticed how white the fat boy had suddenly turned while Sim was teasing him. He immediately guessed what was the matter. He afterwards found out, just as he suspected, that Tubby, wanting to see how everything was done, had stood around on the previous evening when Peleg carved the turtle into bits, after first removing the double shell, always a difficult task.
As Rob well knew, there is often a strange species of muscle contraction observed in the severed portions of a turtle or tortoise when recently killed, so that even pieces of the meat on the block will jump in a most peculiar way. Tubby, doubtless, witnessed with amazement this phenomenon as it was pointed out to him by Peleg, and somehow the remembrance had taken away his desire to feast upon the unlucky owner of the shell.
However, his normal appetite seemed to come back when the heaping plate of well-browned bass came on, for, taken in all, Tubby kept up with the others in disposing of the second course.
It was just after supper, while the boys were sitting around on the big porch resting a while before thinking of starting for town, that Peleg appeared. He approached the spot where it happened Ralph and Rob were idly moving back and forth in one of those wide porch swings.
“I wanted to ask you, Ralph, if you had any room in the car tonight to let me squeeze in, ’cause I happen to have some business to look after in town that ought to be ’tended to. You see, I got a letter when the delivery man went through this mornin’ that says I had ought to see a lawyer in Wyoming right away concerning somethin’ that I’ll tell you ’bout later on.”
Ralph nodded his head as though it would be quite agreeable to him.
“Sure, Peleg, plenty of room,” he replied. “Car will hold seven without crowding, and with you there will be only six. We’ll be starting in about fifteen minutes, so if you haven’t had supper, better be getting busy.”