"Eleven o'clock. You will have to control your impatience for some time yet," said Meredith.
"I can tell you, this boat is awfully heavy," said Fenton. He had meant to use a stronger word, but changed it. "Can't we get lunch by twelve?"
"Oh no! we shall have some reading first, I guess," said Maggie. "Lunch at twelve? Why, you never have it till one, Fenton."
"Makes a difference whether you are pulling a dozen people and forty baskets along," rejoined her brother. "It's an awful bore, to have to do things."
There was a general merry burst at that.
"What sort of things, Fenton? Do you want to live like a South Sea Island savage?" his uncle asked.
"Uncommonly jolly, I should think," responded Fenton. "Dive into the surf and get a lobster, climb into a tree and fetch down a cocoanut—there's your dinner."
"A very queer dinner," remarked Maggie, amid renewed merriment.
"I never heard that lobsters were fished out of breakers, either," said Flora.
"You seem to think it is no work to fight the breakers and climb the cocoanut trees," remarked Mr. Murray. "However, I grant you, it would not occupy a great deal of time. Is your idea of life, that it is useful only for eating purposes?"