While Perk “wrestled” with breakfast, beaming with delight because he actually loved to cook, Elmer took another look at Mr. Codling’s ankle, Amos hovering near, eager to be of any service.
“It’s doing as well as can be expected,” was the comment of Elmer. “These things are never over with in a hurry; it takes time, and a lot of patience to recover from a sprain. If I was down home I could help things along some by rubbing a certain liniment on, that’s the boss thing for sprains. But you’ll have to make up your mind to keep quiet up here, sir.”
“I suppose so, Elmer,” said the patient, with a sigh, “and I oughtn’t to have a word of complaint. In fact, I’m too happy after having heard the good news from Amos that my little family is well, to think of grumbling. The whole thing seems almost like a page taken from a book—my making up my mind to play the part of a tramp as I drew closer to my old home, partly because I was afraid of discovering that something dreadful had happened to my dear ones; and also because I did not know but that there might be a warrant out for my apprehension, which troubled me more or less.
“Then came the storm, and my misfortune, which I thought terrible; yet it brought me in touch with Perk here, and finally the rest of you. Oh! if only I had dreamed that Amos was one of your number, while I hung around the cabin, waiting for a chance to recover my lost knife, how gladly would I have made my identity known. But, after all, it’s come out ten times better than I ever hoped for; and I’d be an ingrate to complain.”
However eager he may have felt to be heading toward Chester, where those dear ones lived from whom he had been separated so long, Mr. Codling grimly resolved not to let Elmer and his chums see his distress of mind. He felt that it would be a shame to cause these fine lads to cut their camping trip in the tall timber short on his account.
But Elmer was revolving a scheme over in his mind, which he confided to Wee Willie on the sly; and the latter as usual declared that it “filled the bill to a dot.”
Without letting the others know what he was doing the tall chum busied himself that very afternoon, away from the camp, making his stretcher, on which the injured man could be carried out of the woods. Elmer proposed that they leave their things in the cabin, manage on the following day to get to some farm-house on the Crawford Notch road, and either make an arrangement with the owner to take Mr. Codling to town in a rig, or else ’phone for a car to come up and get him.
Of course, the devoted Amos could not dream of being absent when the wanderer arrived, and so he would accompany his father, to enjoy the wild delight that was sure to overwhelm the Codling home.
He could return in a day or two, if his yearning for taking flashlight pictures still gripped him, which Elmer believed would be the case; and so spend the balance of their vacation with his chums.
“It’s ten whole days till school takes up, you know,” Wee Willie had remarked, when he and Elmer talked this over. “Plenty of time for us to have all sorts of bully adventures. And if we think it a good plan, while we’re down at that farmer’s place to-morrow, what’s to hinder our laying in a fresh stock of grub?”