“Seen ’em—seen heaps of ’em,” said the unknown. “My son was in ’em once—Buffaloes, out Hendon-way. What are you?”
“Well, just now I’m a sort of temporary Cook,” said The Prawn, whose manners were far better than William’s.
“Temp’ry! Temp’ry!” the stranger puffed. “Can’t be a temp’ry cook any more’n you can be a temp’ry Parson. Not so much. Cookin’s cookin’. Let’s see your notions of cookin’.”
William had never heard any one address The Prawn in these tones, and somehow it cheered him. In the silence that followed he turned on his face and wriggled unostentatiously through the fern, as a Scout should, till he could see that bold man without attracting The Prawn’s notice. And this, too, was the first time that William had ever profited by the instruction of his Scoutmaster or the example of his comrades.
Heavenly sights rewarded him. The Prawn, visibly ill at ease, was shifting from one sinewy leg to the other, while an enormously fat little man with a pointed grey beard and arms like the fins of a fish investigated a couple of pots that hung on properly crutched sticks over the small fire that William had lighted in the cooking-place. He did not seem to approve of what he saw or smelt. And yet it was the impeccable Prawn’s own cookery!
“Lor!” said he at last after more sniffs of contempt, as he replaced the lid. “If you hot up things in tins, that ain’t cookery. That’s vittles—mere vittles! And the way you’ve set that pot on, you’re drawing all the nesty wood-smoke into the water. The spuds won’t take much harm of it, but you’ve ruined the meat. That is meat, ain’t it? Get me a fork.”
William hugged himself. The Prawn, looking exactly like his namesake well-boiled, fetched a big fork. The little man prodded into the pot.
“It’s stew!” The Prawn explained, but his voice shook.
“Lor!” said the man again. “It’s boilin’! It’s boilin’! You don’t boil when you stew, my son; an’ as for this”—up came a grey slab of mutton—“there’s no odds between this and motor-tyres. Well! Well! As I was sayin’——” He joined his hands behind his globular back and shook his head in silence. After a while, The Prawn tried to assert himself.
“Cookin’ isn’t my strong point,” began The Prawn, “but——”