Half-way through the woods he bought two fat doughnuts and a piece of apple pie at a wayside log house. He munched his humble fare with a gusto he had not known for years. The jolting, the shaking, the tossing had started his sluggish blood and cleared his business-befogged brain. His food was spiced with the aroma of the hemlocks, and when they took to the road again he began to hum tunes.
[Illustration: Then he fell to chuckling 049-050]
Then he fell to chuckling. And when a smooth stretch suffered him to unclasp his cramped hold, he slapped his leg mirthfully. He was thinking what President Whittaker of the P. K. & R. would be saying in two weeks.
President Whittaker was a rotund, flabby man, whom long indulgence in rubber-tired broughams and double-springed private cars had softened until he reminded one of a fat down pillow.
"Jerrard," he had said, at parting, "if you find good fishing I'll follow you in two weeks. I need a little outdoor relaxation myself."
Jerrard sent an enthusiastic letter right back by the tote-road driver. He took the word of his guide about the fishing in prospect. In his new and ebullient spirits he felt that he could hardly wait two weeks for the spectacle--Whittaker in the middle seat of a buck-board, on that six-mile carry road. And when the day came, Jerrard, now bronzed, alert and agile walked out over the Poquette Carry, paddled down to Sunkhaze, and received his superior with open arms.
The unconsciousness of the corpulent Whittaker as he left the train, spick and span in tweed and polished shoes appealed to Jerrard's sense of the ludicrous so acutely that the president, following the baggage-laden guide down to the shore of the lake, stopped and looked at his friend with puzzled gaze.
"I say, Jerrard, you seem to be in a good humor."
"Nothing like the ozone of the forest to make you sparkle," chuckled the traffic-manager.
It is unnecessary to describe the incidents of the trip across the lake, the apprehensive flinching of the fat president whenever the canoe lurched, and his fear of breaking through the bottom of the frail shell.
But when they were well out on the carry road in the buckboard, Jerrard, gazing on the indescribable mixture of reproach, horror, pain and astonishment that the president's face presented laughed until Whittaker forgot dignity, cares and fears, and laughed, too.
