“Because you weren’t awake at dinner time to help us eat it, Phil. It’s the last really good meal we’re likely to see for days to come, and we--” “You see,” broke in Irv Strong, “we’re bound to build you up again, Phil, if we have to do it with a hammer and nails. But how recklessly you expose your country breeding!” as he helped all round; “if you were captain of an ocean liner now instead of a flatboat, you would know that dinner before six o’clock is impossible to civilized man, and that the actual dinner hour in all those regions where dress coats and culture prevail, ranges from seven to eight o’clock.” “You are unjust in your mockery, Irv,” said Ed. “And by that you in your turn simply expose your provincialism--and ours, too.” “How?” asked Irv, chuckling to think that he had succeeded in diverting the conversation from channels in which it might easily have become emotional. For all the boys had been for hours under a strain of severe anxiety on Phil’s account. They were full of admiration for the self-sacrificing way in which he had worked and thought and planned for the common welfare. They had been touched to the heart by his exhaustion after his strenuous work was done, and they had been anxious all that afternoon, lest the breakdown of his strength should prove to be lasting. His appetite at supper relieved that fear, but the very relief made them all the more disposed to be a trifle tender toward him. Irv had prevented a scene, so he didn’t mind Ed’s criticism. “How’s that, Ed?” “Why, when you sneer at people because their customs are different from those that we are used to, don’t you see you are just as narrow-minded as they are when they sneer at us because our customs are not theirs.” “Oh, I didn’t mean to sneer,” said Irv. “But, of course, it does seem odd for people to eat dinner at six or seven o’clock in the evening, instead of eating it about noon.” “Not a bit of it. The dinner hour is a matter of convenience. In a little town like ours it is convenient for everybody to go home to dinner at noon, and so everybody does it. In a big city where people live five or ten miles away from their places of business, it is impossible. In such cities business doesn’t begin till nine or ten o’clock in the morning, when the banks and exchanges open, and it is in every way handier to have dinner after the day’s work is done. Our habits are just as odd to city people as theirs are to us.” “Oh, yes, I see that,” said Irv, “and ‘Farmer Hayseed’ is just as snobbish when he laughs at ‘them city folks’ as the city people are when they ridicule him. It reminds me of the nursery story about the town mouse and the country mouse.” “How about the leaks, fellows?” asked Phil, who was now quite himself again. “There aren’t any to speak of,” reported Irv. “We’ve gone over the whole bottom of the boat now, stopping every little crack, and now she’s as dry as a bone. Five minutes’ pumping in an hour is quite enough.”