"Humph!" exclaimed Jonas, who was already beginning to pack baking-tins and things he did not intend to use. "If she doesn't come in time, you'll find yourself on short rations, I can tell you. We are on our last barrel of biscuits. Haven't flour enough for more than one batch of bread; and not a drop of treacle, even if we had the flour, for gingerbread."
"Nor any ginger, even if we had the treacle and flour," added Ben, with a mischievous twinkle of the eye. "Of course there is no ginger, Jonas was so generous with that in my tea."
The boys laughed, but Jonas, indifferent to that, continued his deficit list. "The coffee's gone, and the butter-tub is scraped clean."
"Mercy!" cried Dave. "This is getting melancholy. It's worse than Mother Hubbard's bare cupboard."
"Yes," added Joe with a sigh. "It's nothing but a howling wilderness here, and the sooner we get out of it the better. No, I'll take that back. I'm willing to live on blueberries if everything else gives out. The blueberries are plentiful still."
"Yes, and the clam-beds are not quite cleaned out," said Ben cheerily.
"A fellow that would starve on the edge of the clam-beds deserves to die."
"I suppose there are some fish left in the sea too," suggested Max.
"Yes, a few. Very likely those the tide carried off with our baskets, the day we had our freedom, came to life again, and are out of hospital by this time," said Joe.--"You can't scare us, Jonas. We don't feel a bit afraid of starving."
"No, maybe not, but you'd grumbled well if you didn't get nothin' but fish and berries for fare. You would," answered Jonas, as he nailed down the top of the box.