"Be they minnies?" asked Prudy. "O, I know; it's mack fishes!"
"She means mackerel, you see," said Horace, with a wise look at Grasshopper. "No, Prudy, these are chubbs, nice chubbs, too; I caught 'em myself."
How to cook a fish, Horace had no idea, but he was not a boy to give up at trifles.
"If I put 'em into the fire they'll burn up," said he; "but if I hold 'em over the fire they'll cook;—now won't they?"
"Your hand will cook, too, I guess," said lazy Grasshopper, sitting down and looking on.
Horace said no more, but went quietly to work and whittled some long splinters, on which he stuck the fish and set them to roasting. True, they got badly scorched and dreadfully smoked, but that was not all that happened. A spark flying out caught Prudy's gingham dress, and set it in flames in a second.
Whether the boys would have known what to do, I can't say; but just then Sam Walker, a good-natured colored man, came up and put out the flames before Prudy fairly knew there were any. Then he brought water from a spring and drowned the bonfire, and gave the boys "a piece of his mind."
All the while poor Prudy was running off into the thickest part of the wood, crying bitterly. Sam ran after her, and caught her up, as if she had been a stray lamb; and though she struggled hard, he carried her to the picnic ground, where the large girls were just spreading the table for supper.
"You'd better look out for these here young ones," said Sam. "This one would have been roasted sure, if I hadn't a-happened along in the nick of time."
Ruth Gray dropped the paper of candy she was untying, and turned very pale. She had been too busy playing games to remember that she had the care of any body.