He looked gloomily around, rubbed his forehead as though trying to recollect something, and finally sat down on a log.
"Fact is," he said, "I don't know very much about the woods. Do you? Everything's gone wrong; I tore my canoe in the Ledge Rapids yesterday. I'm in a fix."
Ellis laughed; and his laugh was so pleasant, so entirely without offence, that young Jones laughed, too, for a while, then checked himself to adjust his eyeglasses, which his mirth had displaced.
"Can you cook?" he asked, so seriously that Ellis only nodded, still laughing.
"Then, for Heaven's love, would you, when you cook your own breakfast over that fire, cook enough for two?"
"Why, man, I believe you're hungry," said Ellis, sharply.
"Hungry? Well, I don't know whether you would call it exactly hunger, because I have eaten several things which I cooked. I ought not to be hungry; I tried to toss a flapjack, but it got stuck to the pan. Fact is, I'm a rotten cook, and I guess it's simply that I'm half starved for a decent meal."
"Why, see here," said Ellis, rising to his feet, "I can fix up something pretty quick if you like."
"I do like. Yonder is my cornmeal, coffee, some damp sugar, flour, and what's left of the pork. You see I left it in a corner of the lean-to, and while I was asleep a porcupine got busy with it; then I hung it on a tree, and some more porcupines invited their relatives, and they all climbed up and nearly finished it. Did you suppose that a porcupine could climb a tree?"