"Cracky, I'd like to," I told him.
"I went from Paris to the Channel in an airplane," he said.
Then he gave me a crack on the back and he put his arm around my shoulder awful nice and friendly like, and it made me kind of proud because I knew him.
"Now, you listen here," he said, "I'm in a dickens of a fix. You live in Bridgeboro; do you know Jake Holden?"
"Sure I know him, he's a fisherman," I said; "the very same night your father told us we could use this boat I saw him, and the next day I went to try to find him for a certain reason, and he was gone away down the bay after fish. He taught me how to fry eels."
"Get out," he said, "really?"
"Honest, he did," I told him.
"Well, some day I'll show you how to cook bear's meat. There's something you don't know."
"Did you ever cook bear's meat?" I asked him.
"Surest thing you know," he said; "black bears, gray bears, grisly bears—"