“Work!” answered Nelson scathingly.
“Work!” grunted Dan.
“Work!” laughed Bob.
“Huh!” Tom retaliated. “Who caught these fish?”
“Well, even if you did catch them you needn’t eat them all,” said Dan, wresting the skillet from his hands. “There are others, my boy. Pour me some more coffee, Bob, will you?”
While they ate, with the smoke from the dying fire floating straight into the air and the last rays of the sun tinging the lake with rose-gold, the steamer from The Weirs passed a little way out, her cabin windows alight and her lanterns flashing red and green and white across the mirror-like surface. Bob waved the coffee-pot, incidentally splashing Tom’s face with the contents, and a group at the stern of the boat fluttered their handkerchiefs. Then the dishes were washed at the edge of the lake and the fire replenished. After that they took a stroll along the shore, pausing now and then to shy pebbles at the muskrats which, with little bullet-shaped heads just above the water, swam hither and thither, leaving long ripples behind them. Back to camp they wandered just at dark and sat for a while in the light of the little fire, and then they rolled themselves in their blankets and dropped off to sleep one by one, Tom’s unmusical snores alone breaking the silence. And so ended the first day of the trip; not an exciting one, to be sure, but one of the happiest of the summer.
[CHAPTER XVIII]
TELLS HOW THEY FOUND A DERELICT AND A COURSE DINNER, AND MET WITH SHIPWRECK
