“Picnic!” he called across. “Never again!”
[CHAPTER XVIII]
BUILDING THE RINK
There may be better ways of putting one’s self in condition to do justice to a Thanksgiving Day dinner than paddling a mile and a half in a canoe, walking five miles after that and finishing up with a forty-mile ride in an automobile. If there are, I can’t think of them at this moment. And at all events never, surely, were four hungrier boys ever gathered around a table than the quartet that did full and ample justice to Mr. Pennimore’s hospitality that evening. I shan’t go into many details regarding that repast, for I don’t want to make you envious, but it was an old-fashioned Thanksgiving banquet, with oysters from the host’s own oyster beds, a clear soup, celery and olives, a turkey that, as Alf said, would have been an ostrich if it had lived another day or two, a roast ham that fell to pieces under the carving knife, vegetables without end, a salad that held most all the colors of the rainbow and as many flavors, a pumpkin pie looking like a full harvest moon, ice cream and sherbet in the form of turkeys seated on nests of yellow spun sugar, little cakes with all shades of icing, black grapes nearly as big as golf balls from the Sound View conservatories, apples like the pictures in nursery catalogues, oranges, pears, nuts and raisins and candy. And there was all the sweet cider they wanted, and, finally, black coffee and toasted crackers and some cheese that Tom helped himself to lavishly and afterwards viewed with deep suspicion.
It was almost nine when the chairs were pushed back and the diners adjourned to the big crackling fire in the library. Tom lowered himself cautiously into an armchair with a blissful groan.
“I don’t believe,” he said, “that I shall want to eat again until Christmas. I know now why the Puritans used to go to church in the morning on Thanksgiving Day. They never would have had enough energy to give thanks after dinner!”
Mr. Pennimore led the talk around to subjects nearest to the hearts of his guests and soon had them chattering merrily of school and sports. Tom begged him to come over some time and see a basket ball game.
“I’d like to,” said Mr. Pennimore, “but you know I close the house here to-morrow and go back to New York. I hardly think I shall be in Wissining again before spring. I’m sorry I can’t see some of your winter sports, Tom.”