“Oh! what a long day this promises to be,” groaned Steve.
“Can’t beat yesterday in my opinion,” claimed Toby. “I actually thought the sun was nailed fast up there in the sky, because it didn’t seem to move an inch.”
“That’s because you were on the job every second,” Jack told him. “A watched pot never boils, they used to say; but of course it meant that the water seemed to take an unusual time in bubbling.”
So Steve yawned, and lolled in his blanket, until finally Jack told him he might as well get busy if they expected to have a feast of camp biscuits for lunch.
It was no easy task which Steve had set himself. First of all he insisted on going out and fetching the rude table inside the tent, even if it did crowd them a trifle.
“However could you expect a chef to make biscuits, with never a table to work at?” he threw at Toby when the latter ventured to complain; and of course after that they allowed Steve to have his own way, though Toby hung around to quiz him, until the other ordered him off.
138“You’ll queer these delicacies if you bother me any more, Toby,” he told him severely. “Our cook says you ought almost to hold your breath when making them, because it’s always easy for them to drop. Mebbe she was joshing me, but I don’t want to be bothered and forget to put the baking powder or the salt in.”
Toby kept a roaring fire going, and finally the pan of biscuits was popped into the oven. Steve looked a bit anxious, realizing that his reputation as a cook was now at stake.
“Since we’ve got this table inside here,” spoke up Jack, “we might as well make all the use of it we can, chucking it out again in the rain when supper is over. Here’s a box one can sit on, and we’ll rig up seats for the others somehow.”
“Hurrah!” cried Steve, on hearing this. “That gives my legs a chance to keep out of snarls. I never could curl up like some fellows. But I wonder how they’re coming on inside the oven?”