“I tut-take it all back,” cried Springer. “I offer a humble apology, chef. Say, you’re a wizard.”
“The greatest cook that ever came daown the pike, that’s what he is,” pronounced Crane. “Oh gimme a dip at them beans before I expire.”
Now for breakfast, under ordinary conditions, beans are a hearty food indeed; but the short time they had been in camp had prepared the lads to relish just such heavy food, and digest it, too. Therefore, like the supper of the previous night, this breakfast was voted a tremendous success.
Shortly after breakfast Crane suddenly started up in a listening attitude, and, observing him, the others also listened, hearing the sound of wagon-wheels a short distance away in the woods. A look of almost savage joy contorted Sile’s features as he hissed:
“Here comes that confaounded Dutch boy! Yeou watch me! I’ll scare him into fits.”
But when he hurried forward, eager to put his hands on Carl, he met with a surprise. Drawing the wagon, the old white horse came into view, but the person on the wagon-seat was not Carl. Instead, it was a fat, placid, moon-faced man, who was smoking a huge crooked pipe.
“Hang it!” growled Sile, halting abruptly. “It’s the old Dutchman himself!”
“How you vas, poys?” gurgled Herman Duckelstein, without offering to step down from the wagon. “You can took dose thing vot I haf prought; undt I vill aroundt turn. A crate hurry I vas in.”
“Huh!” exploded Sile. “Where’s that boy of yourn?”
“Maype he vas busy py something else. Yah. Vas it disappointment dot he didt not come?”
“Yes, a great disappointment,” rasped Sile. “I’m mighty sorry not to see him this morning.”
“You seem to like my poy, Carl, ain’t it? You seem to enchoy his companies vhen he comes to seen you, no? Vot vas der matter py your face?”
Sile ignored the question. “I kinder hope you’ll send Carl tomorrer morning, Mr. Duckelstein,” he said. “Yeou’re right abaout aour enjoyin’ his company.”
“Carl toldt me dot an eel didt catch him here,” said Duckelstein, a suspicious twinkle in his eyes. “Didt you at him laugh undt good sports have vhen dot eel caught him?”
“Well,” admitted Sile, grinning a little, “yeou see we couldn’t help laffin’, considerin’ the fact that it wa’n’t no eel, only an old root that got ketched on his line.”