“Say, Dick,” he called, “you ought to bestir yourself to-morrow and clean that oil stove. I can smell it out here.”
“Oil stoves always smell,” answered Dick from the galley.
“Not if you keep them clean. Maybe it needs new wicks.”
“Maybe it does. And maybe if you don’t finish paring those potatoes in the next hour or two we’ll have them for breakfast instead of supper.”
“I like your cheek,” murmured Chub resuming his task with a sigh. “I’m fairly working my hands off out here. What’s that loafer Roy doing anyhow? Why don’t you put him at work?”
“Don’t you worry about him. I’ve got him busy all right,” was the reply. “Say, did we order any salt, Chub? If we did I can’t find it.”
“Send Roy out here to pare these potatoes and I’ll look for it,” responded Chub insinuatingly.
“We’ve found it,” called Dick. “Aren’t you nearly done?”
“Sure; all done; been done for hours.” Chub slid off the railing and bore the potatoes indoors and watched them disappear into the pot of boiling water. Then he and Roy set the table. As each of them had his own convictions regarding the arrangement of knives, forks and spoons there was some confusion for a while. But half an hour later, all differences of opinion were forgotten. Sitting about the table in the tiny after cabin, they had their first meal on board. Through the open windows wandered a little evening breeze which, as Chub poetically remarked, “caressed their cheeks, flushed with the toil of the long day.” On one side the shadowed woods showed, on the other the broad expanse of the river, deeply golden in the late sunlight.
“It’s a perfect shame,” sighed Chub, “to spoil such an appetite as this. I feel as though I ought to keep it and treasure it as something valuable. Pass the ham, Dick.”