"Are we going to have any supper?" asked Phil, looking in from the dining-room. "Roger has fainted with hunger, and lies a pallid heap on the floor, and Obadiah is gnawing his boots in his agony."
"As long as he does not swallow the nails," said Bell, calmly, "it will do him no harm. Have the babes got the table ready?"
"All ready, sister!" cried Kitty. "Cups and saucers and plates, and—oh, Willy, we have forgotten the butter! Why do we always forget the butter?"
In five minutes the whole family were seated round the table, with the lamp burning brightly above their heads. Bell came in triumphantly, bearing the mighty pickerel in their glory, on a huge platter decorated with green leaves and golden-rod. Hildegarde followed, flushed and sparkling, with her biscuits and coffee; and every one fell to with right good will.
"Why is it that everything tastes so good here?" demanded Will. "At home I can't always eat as much as I want to, and here I can always eat more than there is; and yet there is lots!" he added, surveying the broad table, heaped with substantial victuals of every sort.
"Ah! that's the beauty of it!" cried Gerald, spearing a potato. "The human capacity enlarges, my son, with every mile one retires from civilisation. When I was a Kickapoo Indian, Willy, I ate for three weeks without stopping, and I had three buffaloes at a—"
"Gerald, my dear!" said Mrs. Merryweather.
"Yes, Mater, my dear!" said the unblushing Gerald. "I was only trying to expand his mind, like the Ninkum. Excellent biscuits, Miss Hilda! three more, if you please."