“Guess he won’t be able to hold it in much longer,” Elmer told himself, “whatever it can be. Twice now I’ve seen him open his mouth as if to speak, and then shut it again, with a little shake of the head. But it’s bound to come out, and I reckon he means to give Amos a little surprise.”
None of them felt much like doing anything of importance that afternoon, for they had had so little sleep during the preceding night that they were tired and heavy-eyed.
Perk, yielding to his special hobby, did go over to a certain spot on the river bank, and fish for an hour or so during the afternoon; with such good luck that they were assured of a fine mess of perch and bass for supper. He set to work cleaning his catch, an operation which Wee Willie did not attempt to interrupt. That was always a nice thing about Wee Willie; when he saw that anyone felt really happy in doing a job for which he himself had no great hankering, he would never attempt to ask a division of the labor. And so Perk not only caught his fish, but made them ready for the pan, and would in probability also do the cooking in the bargain. There never was a more good-natured and willing chum than Perk, as Wee Willie often told himself, with one of his grins; and it is also to be hoped he fully appreciated those winning qualities in the stout youth.
The supper was a grand success.
Perk “blew” himself for the occasion, as he called it, and really prepared enough for two-thirds of a dozen instead of just five mouths.
“Huh! you never can tell in these queer times when you’re going to have company drop in on you,” he remonstrated, when Elmer mildly expressed his surprise at the enormous amount that came to their rough-and-ready table. “Only last night you entertained one stranger at your fire; while I had Mr. Codling pop in on me unexpected like. Then remember how those two guards from the asylum came tapping, tapping at our cabin door the first night we were here? So I believe in preparedness. An ounce of prevention is worth more’n a pound of cure. If anybody should step in, all we’ve got to do is to say ‘sit down, and fill up, friends!’”
Nevertheless when the meal was through it was really surprising how little had been left; for their appetites seemed capable of stretching in a remarkable way, and Wee Willie acted as though he could never reach his limit.
“I declare,” he confessed, after a fourth helping to the stew Perk had concocted from canned beef, succotash, and some cold potatoes, “I’m beginning to suspect my legs must be hollow all the way down, because how else could I stow away what I’ve devoured?”
And after that, of course, Wee Willie might expect to have a deal of fun poked at him in connection with his queer anatomy.
They ate supper inside the cabin, so as to be near Mr. Codling; though of course such old campers as Wee Willie and Elmer, perhaps Perk in the bargain, would have preferred sitting outdoors, so long as the weather was fine, and the “skeeters” not too vicious.