“Give me your potato?” asked his left-hand neighbor.
“Yes.”
It was quickly appropriated. Hector looked with some curiosity at the boy who did so much justice to boarding-school fare. He was a thin, pale boy, who looked as if he had been growing rapidly, as, indeed, he had. This, perhaps, it was that stimulated his appetite. Afterward Hector asked him if he really liked his meals.
“No,” he said; “they’re nasty.”
He was an English boy, which accounted for his use of the last word.
“You eat them as if you liked them,” remarked Hector.
“I’m so hungry,” apologized Colburn, mournfully. “I’m always hungry. I eat to fill up, not ‘cause I like it. I could eat anything.”
“I believe he could,” said Wilkins, who overheard this conversation. “Could you eat fried cat, now?” he asked.
“Yes,” answered Colburn, honestly. “There would be something hearty and filling about fried cat. I ain’t half full now.”
It was just after dinner.