“Ah, methinks thou hast a lean and hungry look.”
“Hungry’s not the word. Starving Belgium is nothing to me. I feel as though I had had nothing to eat since yesterday.”
“Oh, Skeeter! Think of all that lunch!” exclaimed Lil, lolling back luxuriously in the steamer chair with grass cloth cushions tucked in around her. “Why, Mr.—Mr.—Spring-keeper, he has done nothing but eat all day!”
“We think it is very hard on you for all of us to come piling in on you this way,” said Lucy.
“Hard on us! Why, Tom Tit and I are so happy we hardly know what to do to show it,” said the old man kindly. “But you must excuse me while I go prepare some food for you.”
“But you must let us help!” from the girls, although Lil was rather perfunctory in her offers of assistance. She felt as though nothing short of dynamite could get her out of that chair.
“No, indeed! Tom Tit and I are famous cooks and we can get something ready in short order.”
“Please, sir,” said Frank, who had been very quiet while the others were telling their host of their adventures, “I—I—must not stop one moment to eat or anything else. I want you to tell me how to find my way back to Greendale so I can tell the people at the camp that Lucy and Lil are all right. They were put in our charge, and I must let them know.”
“Of course, I am going, too,” put in Skeeter, “but I thought I might eat first.”