“You forget that nearly five years have gone past since you were home, Sam,” he went on to say. “Amy isn’t a baby any longer, but the prettiest little girl the sun ever shone on. Wait till you see her, that’s all. She’s as sweet as she is pretty, which is the best part of it all. We worship her as if she might be a fairy queen in our house.”
Sam thereupon gave a half groan.
“I guess it goes without saying,” he remarked, sadly, “that all the badness in the Merrivale family was concentrated in me. Oh! how bitterly I’ve repented some of the mean things I did in those wild days; and nearly broke my mother’s heart. I’ve tried again and again to lay all the blame on father for being so strict; but, Gus, I know just as well as anything that I was at fault, too. But I’m going to make it all up, if I live long enough.”
Breakfast was eaten amidst considerable merriment. Everybody seemed to be quite cheerful, considering the fact that they were snowbound on the one great day of the fall which all true Americans celebrate at home or abroad, the Thanksgiving handed down from the Pilgrim Fathers.
“There’s something that’s bothering me,” remarked Billy, “and that’s grub!”
“What about it?” demanded Arthur. “So far as I can see it’s just prime, and as good as anything we ever packed into camp. Please put a couple of pieces of that bacon on my pannikin, will you, Hugh? It certainly goes to the spot. I never smell bacon or ham cooking at home but what my mind goes out to camp life. They seem, as Billy here would say, intimately connected.”
“Oh! the quality is gilt-edged,” the fat scout hastened to admit. “It’s the quantity that’s bothering me. Look what a hole we’ve made already in our stack, will you? Where will we be three days from now, tell me?”
Hugh laughed at hearing this complaint, because it was not the first time by any means that he had listened to Billy holding forth along similar lines.
“Oh! no use borrowing trouble, Billy,” he said, consolingly. “Don’t cross a bridge before you come to it, as lots of people do. There are several remedies to your disease. If necessary we can cut our outing short and speed back home in the big auto. Then again, if we conclude to stay, a couple of us can scour the country around this section, and visit several farm houses, where money will talk, and buy all the eggs and chickens we want. It’s all right, Billy, make your mind up to that.”
As the morning advanced none of them cared to stay outdoors more than was absolutely necessary, so keen was the wind. One by one they took turns wielding the camp ax, and bringing in stacks of wood.