“Have you got a job for me, Billy?” asked Hugh, as though he meant every word of it, and would be only too willing to do his part in the great preparations going on.
“‘Too many cooks spoil the broth,’ Mr. Scout Master,” replied Billy. “I guess I’ve got as many to see after as I can well manage, as it is. But I did want your valued advice as to whether we ought to cook a pot of rice, with all those potatoes and onions the fellows are preparing.”
“Suit yourself, Billy. It takes considerable to fill fourteen mouths, and we expect three for company besides. If you’re meaning to have several fires going, it would be no harm to put on a kettle. Boiled rice is always a favorite of mine, hot or cold, so it isn’t apt to go to waste.”
“Some of the same’ll go to my waist if the other grub gives out, you hear me!” declared Bud Morgan, who was giving the finishing touches to a third cooking fire that Billy had thought they might need.
So the good work went on, and as the sun sank out of sight behind the western horizon, supper was within hailing distance, to judge from the way some of those always hungry boys went about sniffing the delightful odors that filled the air. That is the time when the minutes drag as if they had leaden weights, and it seems as though someone must have surely imitated Joshua of old, and made the declining sun apparently stand still.
The padrone made his appearance in good time, and was given a seat of honor on one of the several logs that had been rolled up in a circle to serve the diners. His dark face was a mass of wrinkles now, for he was smiling all the time.
Perhaps it might be the padrone felt the great honor that had been thrust on him when he was thus invited to eat with the uniformed scouts. Perhaps he was even thinking of how he could make boasts when next he wrote a letter to the old country, and narrated how he had rubbed elbows with the “real thing” in the shape of Boy Scouts.
The chances were, however, that those fine smells in the air had considerable to do with the expression of happiness on the padrone’s face. He looked toward the cooking fires frequently, it might be noticed; and when Bud Morgan came near dropping one of the big frying-pans that was heaped with a mess of potatoes and onions, the padrone was seen to clasp his hands and look terribly frightened, as if he feared that after all he might be fated to lose his anticipated feast.
Then came Dr. Richter and Nurse Jones. The boys all got up and saluted upon their arrival. Billy had told them that was the sort of thing to do when they had a lady come to dine with them. Nurse Jones laughed quite merrily as she tried to return their salutation with a nod of her head.
Hugh believed she looked prettier than ever when she did that. He also wondered what Mr. Campertown would think if he could only see her now. Would the cobwebs in his confused brain be swept aside, so that he could remember who she put him in mind of?