When everybody but Bennie had gone from camp, he heated a big pail of water, got out a cake of soap, and washed all the dirty clothes, hanging them on a tent rope in the sun to dry. Then he picked up camp as neat as he could, aired all the bedding and remade the sleeping bags, and finally went off and hunted up dead branches for fuel, dragging them back to camp. After lunch, while the rest were loafing, he took the fishing rod and sneaked away unseen, went rapidly down the trail, and working around on the rocks by the shore, managed to hook three trout. He was just coming up over the rim with them when Spider and Lester, wondering at his long absence, had started out to look for him.
“I sure hate a man who pins roses on himself,” Bennie remarked, as he was cleaning the fish for dinner, “but I just can’t help admitting that I’ve been mamma’s little white-haired boy today. I’ve washed all your dirty shirts and socks, and I’ve got wood, and I’ve cleaned up camp, and now I’ve dragged my poor old aching bones down a thousand feet and back again to catch you three sweet little fishie-wishies for supper. Won’t somebody please say ‘Thank you, Bennie, you are a good boy’?”
“Bennie doesn’t like himself a bit, does he?” remarked Dumplin’, addressing a camp robber in a tree overhead.
“Can’t you prescribe something for his poor old aching bones, Doc?” asked Mr. Stone.
“Try rubbing ’em with a little fish oil, Bennie,” Spider put in.
“I think I shall prescribe exercise,” Uncle Billy laughed.
“Well, of all the ungrateful bunches, you sure get the loving cup!” Bennie exclaimed. “I hope you all choke on a fish bone.”
“The Bible says virtue is its own reward, Bennie,” remarked Mr. Stone.
“Pretty skinny pickings for some of you guys, then,” Bennie grinned.
But after supper Uncle Billy strolled out with Bennie to the point of Victory Rock, to see the lake like a great blue mirror in the twilight, and he said, quietly: