Billy, remembering the day, laid out quite an extensive menu for Thanksgiving dinner, nor did he have any trouble about finding plenty of recruits ready to assist in peeling potatoes and doing the other chores.
“I did hope,” he announced, when asking their opinion of his intended bill of fare, “that somebody’d be smart enough to bag a plump gobbler. It would have been a splendid thing to grace the head of the table. But let’s be thankful we’ve got what might be called the poor man’s turkey—pork. That half ham is going to take the place of the National bird for this once. First time, though, since I was knee-high to a duck that I haven’t eaten real turkey on Thanksgiving.”
“There must always be a first time, Billy,” was Arthur’s consoling remark.
They put in most of the morning getting ready for the dinner. Billy fairly outdid all his previous efforts along the line of preparing a grand feast. He had looked ahead when laying in his stock of edibles, as was apparent when the meal finally was placed on the table.
The bill of fare Billy had written out and placed beside every tin pannikin was as follows:
Tomato soup, Celery, Tuna fish, à la Camp Merrivale, Boiled Ham (home smoked), Potatoes mashed (“Irish”), Yams, baked camp-style, Yellow turnips, Bread and butter, Pumpkin pie, Cheese, crackers and coffee.
Who cared because there was no table cloth, and that the dishes were of tin or granite or aluminum? What did it matter if the supply was so limited that often during the meal some one had to scurry over and do a little dishwashing before he could take the next course?
The ham was unbeatable, the fish just prime, the vegetables as “good as mother herself could have prepared them,” so they all admitted, and even the pumpkin pies that dear old Billy had smuggled into camp so carefully without any of the others knowing about it, came through in pretty good shape. The fact that they were broken a little mattered nothing to those boys who ate and ate until they could only look helplessly at one another, and wonder how under the sun they could ever dream of wanting anything more for forty-eight hours.
Perhaps that was one of the biggest events in Casey’s whole life. It must have been many a year since he had filled himself with such a choice collection of good things. Possibly it brought back memories that had almost faded from the mind of the old tramp, for to be sure he had once been a boy, and lived upon a farm. During the remainder of that whole day Casey was unusually quiet. When Sam asked him if he felt ill he shook his head and grinned, and simply said he was resurrecting dead recollections that he had never thought would rise again to haunt him.
Hugh only hoped they might continue to pester the old chap until finally he decided to give up this wandering life, and go back to see if any of his own kindred were still alive.