“This,” said Mr. Gifford, “is the dining-hall. The fellows call it the
Grubbery. There are four tables, you see. The Chief sits at the head of
this one and the rest of us fellows take the others. That doesn’t leave
one for you, though, does it? Guess the Chief will put you at the foot
of his. The fellows take turns at setting the tables and clearing them.
We have a splendid cook and plenty of good things to eat. You won’t go
hungry, Craig. Speaking of that----”
Mr. Gifford led the way across the hall and through a swinging door
into a kitchen. Sam followed and was introduced to the cook, one Cady
Betts, a tall, fair-complexioned French-Canadian whom the boys, as Sam
discovered later, called “Kitty-Bett.”
“Cady,” said Mr. Gifford, “we’re starved. Got anything to eat?”
The cook, who had been stocking the shelves with the supplies which had
reached camp a little while before, smiled doubtfully.
“There is nothing cook,” he said in his careful English, “but there is
crackers and cheeses. Maybe you like them?”
Mr. Gifford declared that he did and, assisted moderately by Sam,
consumed a large quantity of each, sitting on the kitchen table and
chatting the while with “Kitty-Bett.” The latter, Sam learned by
listening, came from Michigan and in winter cooked for a big lumber
company. He had a pair of the mildest, softest blue eyes Sam had ever
seen in a man, and a pleasant smile, but one had only to watch him
handle the cans and bags and jugs for a minute to see that he was as
deft and quick as he was amiable. Presently Mr. Gifford conducted Sam
back through the dining-hall again, pointing out the mail box which
hung just inside the doorway. All the doors at the camp were double and
swung outward, and, as Sam found in the course of time, were seldom
ever closed. Eating in the dining-hall was much like eating out of
doors, for, besides the big doorway and a shuttered opening at the
front, the two sides of the building from three feet above the floor to
the eaves opened out and up, admitting light and air and, it must be
confessed, not a few flies!
There was an ice-house behind the kitchen, with a storage space in
front for meats and eggs and milk and vegetables, a place whose
temperature was most grateful after the warmth outside. From there they
walked down to the landing. Here lay quite a flotilla of row-boats and
canoes, which a tow-headed youth named Jerry--if he had another name
Sam never learned it--was engaged in painting and varnishing. Jerry was
a sort of general factotum; carried the mail across the lake once a day
in the little naphtha launch, which had not yet been slid out of the
small boat-house nearby, washed dishes after meals, pared potatoes,
ran errands, and performed a dozen other duties. Mr. Gifford shook
hands with Jerry and formally presented Sam. Jerry observed, with a shy
smile, that he was “pleased to meet you, sir.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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