"That is splendid of Hippy," declared Anne, smiling and nodding.
"I tell him, however, that when we are his guests in the Hippy Mountains, he can give us three good meals a day, cooked by his own fair hands, but that is all," announced Grace. "Do I echo your sentiments, girls?"
They said she did. That is, all except Emma Dean agreed with Grace Harlowe. Emma warned them that Hippy had better not offer her a share in anything unless he were prepared in his heart to lose it.
"Very good then, I won't. I withdraw the offer," declared Hippy airily. "I will agree to cook a meal for you over on the range. Mark the words, 'cook a meal for you on the range!' Ha-ha. How is that? I reckon I can stand it to cook a meal for you if you can stand it to eat it. Speaking of food reminds me that I smell bacon frying, so suppose we fall to and devour it, provided it is fit to eat. Personally I am not overloaded with confidence in Laundry's ability as a chef."
Night had settled over the mountains when they finally sat down on the ground by the campfire to eat their supper, the first warm meal they had had since starting out on their journey at daylight that morning.
Washington had done very well with his first meal, considering that he so recently had been kicked out of camp by an irate mule, and the Overland girls admitted that the little colored boy did know how to cook after all, for the bacon, the coffee, and the potatoes, baked in their jackets in hot ashes, were delicious.
The girls, however, had already found it necessary to read Wash a lecture on the beauties of neatness and cleanliness, it having been discovered that, in this direction, Wash-Wash was not all that his nickname implied.
Wash, having been given permission, retired to the edge of the laurel to resume his harmonica exercise. Lying back in the shadows, only the whites of his eyes and the reflection of the light from the campfire on teeth and harmonica were visible to the Overlanders, giving merely a suggestion of a human countenance.
"A nature sketch in black and white," observed Anne Nesbit. "I should think he would weary of blowing that thing so much. He has been doing so all day long."
"Blowing? You are wrong," corrected Hippy. "A harmonica is played with a grunt and a sigh. I could make a brand new pun on that if I wanted to, but—"