The dinner to which he alluded, was no other than a heap of sweet potatoes, that were very snugly roasting under the embers, and which Tom, with his pine stick poker, soon liberated from their ashy confinement; pinching them, every now and then, with his fingers, especially the big ones, to see whether they were well done or not. Then having cleansed them of the ashes, partly by blowing them with his breath, and partly by brushing them with the sleeve of his old cotton shirt, he piled some of the best on a large piece of bark, and placed them between the British officer and Marion, on the trunk of the fallen pine on which they sat.
"I fear, sir," said the general, "our dinner will not prove so palatable to you as I could wish; but it is the best we have."
The officer, who was a well bred man, took up one of the potatoes and affected to feed, as if he had found a great dainty; but it was very plain, that he ate more from good manners than good appetite.
Presently he broke out into a hearty laugh. Marion looked surprised. "I beg pardon, general," said he: "but one cannot, you know, always command his conceits. I was thinking how drolly some of my brother officers would look, if our government were to give them such a bill of fare as this."
"I suppose," replied Marion, "it is not equal to their style of dining."
"No, indeed," quoth the officer; "and this, I imagine, is one of your accidental lent dinners; a sort of a `ban yan'. In general, no doubt, you live a great deal better."
"Rather worse," answered the general: "for often we don't get enough of this."
"Heavens!" rejoined the officer. "But probably, what you lose in meal you make up in malt; though stinted in provisions, you draw noble pay?"
"Not a cent, sir," said Marion, "not a cent."
"Heavens and earth! then you must be in a bad box. I don't see, general, how you can stand it."