Perk was laughing, even while his eyes showed plain signs of being humid, so great was his emotion.
“Say, don’t squeeze me into a jelly, boys, please!” he breathlessly protested, in mock seriousness. “Why, you’d think I was the Prodigal Son come home to Dad’s house to help eat the fatted calf. And speaking of eating, oh! have any of you got a crumb, or something to stay the awful feeling of emptiness in the pit of my stomach?”
Amos thereupon dragged out the square of chocolate, possibly mentally lamenting that he had been so greedy as to devour every scrap of his own cake. Upon this fat Perk descended like a hawk, though the others were more or less surprised to see him scrupulously divide it in exact halves before consenting to put a particle of it in his mouth.
“Yum! yum! that does go to the spot!” he hastened to mumble, rubbing his paunch with evident gratification; while the look in his eyes as much as said: “The only bad thing about is the limited supply.”
“How did you put in the time while that storm was booming, we all want to know, Perk?” Wee Willie was now saying.
At that the other grinned happily.
“Oh! I’ve had a wonderful time, all told, fellows,” he announced. “Since I left camp I’ve been through a heap of adventures, believe me. No use harping on a disagreeable subject, so you’ll just have to imagine how I got twisted up in my bearings, and finally had to admit that I was once more in the same old fix,—actually and truly lost.
“Then the storm caught me while I was sitting beside a little fire I’d managed to make, for these days you know I always keep a supply of matches on hand for just such emergencies. Well, it put my fire out in short order, and there I was, getting soaked to the skin, and picking my way along through the black woods, not knowing when I might run slap against a hungry wild cat, or else that bear we saw up in the tree.
“After I got so wet it didn’t matter, I just kept moving about till the storm let up. Then feeling chilly I began trying out the setting-up exercises that they use in the army, which soon made me comfy again.”
“No use talking, you are improving, Perk,” said Wee Willie, admiringly.