“D’ye think so? well, I’ve no doubt you can do it, Little Bill, for you’ve got a brave spirit of your own, but there’s a wet bit o’ moss you’ll have to cross which you mayn’t have noticed. Would you like to be lifted over that, and so keep your moccasins dry?”
“Archie, you’re a humbug. You’re always trying to make me give you needless trouble.”
“Well, have it your own way, Little Bill. I’ll help you to walk up.”
“No, carry me,” said Billie, stretching out his arms; “I’ve changed my mind.”
“I will, if you prefer it, Little Bill,” said Archie, lifting his brother in his strong arms and setting him down on the convenient spot before referred to.
Billie was not altogether helpless. He could stand on his weak legs and even walk a little without support, but to tramp through the woods, or clamber up a hill, was to him an absolute impossibility. He had to content himself with enjoyments of a milder type. And, to do him justice, he seemed to have no difficulty in doing so. Perhaps he owed it to his mother, who had been a singularly contented woman and had taught Billie from his earliest years the truth that, “contentment, with godliness, is great gain.” Billie did not announce his belief in this truth, but he proclaimed it unwittingly by the more powerful force of example.
Breakfast is a pleasant meal at any time if the operator be hungry, but who shall describe the delights of breakfast when eaten in company with several thousand wild-fowl, in a romantic wilderness with fresh air laden with the perfumes of the vegetable kingdom encircling the person; the glorious sunshine dazzling the eyes; the sweet songs of animated nature thrilling the ears, and the gentle solicitations of an expectant appetite craving within? Words are wasted in such an effort. We feel constrained to leave it—as we have not seldom left many a thing before now—to the reader’s more or less vivid imagination.
A blazing fire of pine-logs boiled two tin kettles and roasted two fat wild-ducks. In one of the kettles Archie compounded and stirred robbiboo—of which, perhaps, the less said the better. In the other, Billie infused a small quantity of tea. The roasting ducks—split open, impaled on sticks and set up before the fire—looked after themselves till they began to burn, when they were turned by Archie and again neglected for a few minutes.
It was a glorious meal in all respects, and even Billie, whose appetite was moderately strong, enjoyed it immensely—none the less that he had asked a blessing on it before beginning, and all the more that he sympathised fully with his brother in his possession of an amazing—a shamelessly robust—capacity for food.
“Now, we’ll go to work,” remarked Archie, wiping his mouth with a sigh of contentment, (he had nothing else to wipe it with!) after finishing the last spoonful of robbiboo, the last limb of duck and the last mug of tea.