They found Miss Milly building a fire in a small clearing, where it would not scorch the trees. Sidney was with her. As he saw the boys approach he got down on his knees and began to blow the flame into a blaze, and puffed and panted so hard at his work, that he could not even get his breath to say “thank you,” when Martin remarked, “Here is your rod, Sidney. You left it on the rock. I’ll lean it against this maple, till you are ready to take charge of it.”
“I am glad you have come,” said Miss Milly to the group of boys; “for we are getting magnificent appetites, and I wanted Sidney and Martin to roast the clams.”
“Clams!” cried Martin; “that was what made Sidney’s load so heavy, then, coming up the hill. How I like roasted clams!”
Miss Milly showed him Sidney’s empty basket, and told him that she and Melinda had prepared a compact bed of the clams on the ground, and that they had then placed over them a quantity of dry branches, ready to kindle when Sidney should come with the matches, which he carried in his pocket, and had brought for the purpose.
The tablecloth was already spread on a flat rock near at hand, and the little girls were still busy arranging the contents of their baskets upon it, for, by general consent, they were to dine together that day, and share with each other the eatables that had been provided for the excursion.
Martin reached down his and Nelly’s basket, from a high limb where he had hung it for safety, and Comfort’s big cake, which Mrs. Brooks had cut in quarters, was fitted together and placed in the centre of the cloth for the chief ornament.
“Will not Comfort feel proud when she hears it?” whispered Nelly to Martin, as she passed him with her hands full of knives and forks.
The fire was soon blazing and sputtering over the clams, and in a short time Sidney pronounced them cooked. With branches of trees, the boys then drew the burning fragments away, and scattered the red coals till the bed of baked clams presented itself. Miss Milly tried one and found it was just in a fine state to eat, and then the children were told that all was ready.
Armed with plates, pieces of bread and butter, and knives and forks, they drew near, and the talking and laughing that ensued, as each opened the hot shells, for his or herself, made a merry scene of it.
There were enough for all, and to spare; and when they left the clam-bed, still smoking and smouldering, to assemble around “table-rock,” as Melinda called it, where the daintier part of the feast was spread, Martin said he had never tasted such finely roasted clams in his life.