Brent peeled the potatoes for frying, and he looked funny enough sitting facing the little stove with his long legs held up by another old rickety chair, his feet so close to the increasing blaze that one might have supposed they were going to have fried leather for supper. “I like the odor of burning shoes,” he said; “it’s the very sole of camping.”
“Peel them closer,” said Tom; “you’re throwing away half the potato with the peel. And cut out the eyes, too; like this. Here, I’ll show you.”
A rusty old pan was on Brent’s lap, and as he worked on soberly, his spectacles halfway down his nose, he gave the impression that peeling potatoes was a very sober and intellectual task.
“You’d better get water,” said Brent, “I’ll be ready to dump these in in about a couple of minutes.”
Tom brought water from the neighboring spring and put it on the little round stove to boil, pausing to warm his hands over the red-hot lid. “Do you know it’s blowing up mighty chilly outside for this time of year?” he said.
“A very funny thing has occurred,” said Brent pausing soberly.
“Did you hear a sound too? Sounded to me like someone running; I was over by the spring.”
“Probably the man coming to read the gas meter,” said Brent; “or else the wind. You hear all kinds of things up here.”
“You sure do,” said Tom.
“But what I was going to say,” said Brent, “is that I think this flourishing metropolis is haunted or bewitched or something. I just cut the peel off a potato only to find that there was no potato inside it. That’s a very funny thing when you come to think of it. Where’s the potato? It was inside when I started to⸺”