"And may I cook one of my fish just as I please?" asked Cleo, when they were on their homeward way.
"Why, yes, I suppose so, if Alameda does not object," Captain Clark answered. "But what is your way, Cleo, dear? If you intend to fry it in deep olive oil, I'm afraid—"
"Oh, nothing as elaborate as that," was the laughing reply. "It's just an experiment I want to try. And yet it isn't exactly an experiment, either, for I read how to do it in a camping book. It's baked fish in a mud ball."
"A mud ball!" cried Grace. "That doesn't sound very enticing!"
"Well, it isn't exactly mud, but clean clay," Cleo explained. "And before you plaster the clay around the fish, you cover him with green leaves from the sassafras bush, or some spice leaves. It sounds awfully good, and I think it will look quite artistic."
"Much better than it did at first," agreed Margaret, laughing. "Fancy muddy fish!"
And when camp was reached, much to the amusement, and the unspoken indignation of Alameda, Cleo was allowed to try her experiment. Zeb cleaned the fish for her—that was all she asked. Then Cleo dug a hole in the soft earth and built in it a fire.
"What I'm going to do," Cleo explained, "is to put a lump of butter inside the whole, cleaned fish. Then I wrap him in leaves and outside of that I put a ball of wet clay. Then I put the fish, clay and all down in the fire, cover it with embers and let it bake."
"A sort of fish-ball," commented Madaline.
"Well, you'll see," said Cleo.