“If you’ll just walk slow I’ll run back and get some more,” said Jelly. “It won’t take me but a minute. Go on, Rob, let me go along.”
Rob looked inquiringly at Malcolm and Evan. Evan laughed.
“Let him come, Rob,” he said. “The more the merrier. But he will have to get some more grub.”
“We-ll,” began Rob. But Jelly was already hurrying back toward the kitchen. “I suppose we might as well take him,” said Rob. “He’s a decent chap. But he will be just about all in by the time he gets up. We’ll go ahead slow and let him catch up to us.”
But by the time they had reached the first ascent it was evident that if they were to have the pleasure of Mr. Jell’s society on the climb they would have to wait for him. So they perched themselves on top of the stone wall that divides the school property from the woods and waited.
“Let’s cut some sticks,” suggested Malcolm. “They help a lot until you get to the rocks.”
“Right you are,” Rob agreed. “We must have some alpen-stocks. Who’s got a good strong knife?”
Evan supplied that article, and they set out in search of suitable branches for their purpose. By the time they had cut and trimmed four stout sticks Jelly was in sight, toiling breathlessly up the slope with a package wrapped in a flapping newspaper in one hand. When he reached them he was so out of breath that they mercifully perched themselves on the wall again and allowed him to recuperate.
“All I could get,” panted Jelly, “was bread and potatoes and six raw eggs. Cook was grumpy as she could be. Said she’d given out all the food she was going to. Said somebody had helped himself to a lot of crullers from the pastry-room.”
Malcolm looked idly at the sky and hummed a song.