and what this chap can be,” Wee Willie concluded. “I only hope now he knows we’re stopping here he’ll take the hint, and keep off the grass. It’ll go rough with any hobo we catch bothering our traps, let me tell you. Here, put that one on this warm plate I’ve got on this flat stone alongside the fire, Perk. It makes a beginning, and we can soon be starting in to feed.”

“Somebody open that bottle of maple syrup,” observed the bustling cook a little later on, as another “cart-wheel” cake went turning over in the air, to be caught dexterously again in the pan. “And when I get a third one ready you’d better start in eating while they’re fresh and hot. The coffee’s done; and of course I don’t mean to commence until somebody can spell me here.”

In good time they were doing full justice to Perk’s famous flapjacks; which each and every camper solemnly declared when passing up his pie-tin for more were really unequaled by anything served at the breakfast table at home.

Of course Wee Willie presently insisted on taking Perk’s place, so that the chef might take the edge off his own appetite; until finally all of them declared they could not swallow another bite, and with three cakes left over.

“For munching on between meals, if any one wants a snack,” Perk explained, as he put them aside. “Nothing to be wasted in this camp—that is, except perhaps the first tryout in a batch.”

Then they commenced to do things, each one having jotted down certain tasks that should be attended to without delay.

Elmer and Wee Willie took upon their shoulders the mending of the cabin roof; patching up sundry apertures between the logs of the walls, where the dried mud had long since fallen away through the action of time and weather combined; and also renewing the broken hinge on the cumbersome door.

Perk insisted on cleaning up the breakfast things; somehow he loved to serve in the capacity of cook, and his mates seemed perfectly willing to have it so, strange to say.

As for Amos, already he had his precious camera out, and announced his intention of searching the immediate neighborhood, in hopes of securing some unusual picture.

“I’d like above all things to find a late partridge on her nest,” he was explaining ere he sauntered forth. “I’ve always wanted to get a picture of the bird on her eggs, or strutting around with her chicks; but I’m afraid it’s a heap too late in the season for such a 

 Prev. P 21/115 next