Great Grief had fixed the coffee to boil on the gas stove, but he had to watch it closely, for the rubber tube was short, and a chair was balanced on a trunk, and two bundles of kindling was balanced on the chair, and the gas stove was balanced on the kindling. Coffee-making was here accounted a feat.
Pennoyer dropped a piece of bread to the floor. "There! I'll have to go shy one."
Wrinkles sat playing serenades on his guitar and staring with a frown at the table, as if he was applying some strange method of clearing it of its litter.
Florinda assaulted Great Grief. "Here, that's not the way to make coffee!"
"What ain't?"
"Why, the way you're making it. You want to take——" She explained some way to him which he couldn't understand.
"For heaven's sake, Wrinkles, tackle that table! Don't sit there like a music box," said Pennoyer, grappling the eggs and starting for the gas stove.
Later, as they sat around the board, Wrinkles said with satisfaction, "Well, the coffee's good, anyhow."
"'Tis good," said Florinda, "but it isn't made right. I'll show you how, Penny. You first——"
"Oh, dry up, Splutter," said Grief. "Here, take an egg."