"And we're doing it for fun," added Upton. "Funny what a difference the view-point makes. I suppose it's all in the way you look at it whether work is fun or fun is work. I can tell you one thing, and that is that I for one am mighty glad that there isn't another one of those things to cross to-day. I'm afraid I'd lie down and holler quits. What are you rubbing your legs for, Sparrer?"
"Just feeling of 'em to get wise if dey's all dere," replied Sparrer.
The remainder of the trail to Little Goose was comparatively easy and they reached the familiar lean-to just as dusk was settling down, and there was more than one sigh of thankfulness as the shoes were kicked off for the last time.
"I'm tired enough to drop right down and go to sleep in the snow, but my little tummy won't let me," confessed Hal. "Ring for the waiter, please, and have him bring me a planked steak with half a chicken on the side, grapefruit salad, and a pot of coffee with real cream. Wake me up when it comes."
"Nothing doing," declared Pat. "This isn't the Waldorf Astoria, but Hotel de Shivers; heat and food supplied only to those who pay in labor, all bills payable in advance."
"That's me!" Hal seated himself on the pile of stuff and gave vent to an exaggerated sigh of contentment. "Haven't I labored all day? Tell the bellhop to take my stuff to my room. I think I'll have my dinner served there."
He ended with a grunt, the result of a sharp poke in the pit of his stomach from an axe handle. "To turn on the heat with," explained Pat sweetly, thrusting the axe into Hal's hands, and pointing to a pile of birch logs.
Hal got to his feet with a groan and a grimace and followed Upton who, with another axe, had already started for the wood-pile. "You're a slave driver! That's what you are, a flint-hearted slave driver," he grumbled, albeit with a twinkle that belied his words.
"My tummy, oh, my tummy!
It gives me such a pain!
I wonder will it ever
Feel really full again!"
"That depends on how soon you get that wood split," grinned Pat. "If you don't get a move on it will be so dark you can't see what you are doing, and I give you fair warning—no wood, no dinner."