That dinner was worth waiting for, worth all the trouble and weariness it had entailed. They sat around the smoldering fire, balancing tin plates on their knees, with cups of steaming hot coffee and buttered rolls and doughnuts and salt and pepper-boxes dotting the immediate landscape, and did full justice to it. Malcolm’s opinion of his culinary ability was justified by results. The steak was just right, Jelly’s chops were cooked to a turn, the two precious eggs were perfectly fried and the coffee—well, perhaps the coffee was a trifle muddy, but it was hot and it was drinkable and there were no criticisms. The potatoes belied their outward appearance and were surprisingly white and mealy when opened. Jelly had forgotten to provide himself with plate, cup, knife, fork or spoon and ate his dinner from a flat stone, using borrowed implements and his fingers by turns. Malcolm shared his tin cup with him.

“Have a piece of chop, Rob?” asked Jelly.

“No, thanks.”

“I wish you would. I had some of your steak.”

“What kind of chops are they?”

“I—I think they’re veal. Anyhow, there isn’t much taste to them.”

“Then of course they’re veal,” laughed Malcolm. “Evan, I’ll bet you didn’t get all the potatoes out; we’re shy four or five.”

“Here’s one if you want it. I got all I could find. How’s the coffee holding out, Rob?”

Rob seized the pot and shook it.

“Plenty here, I guess. Pass your cup.”

“It’s always well to shake it about a bit,” said Malcolm dryly. “It makes it so nice and clear.”

“Oh, don’t be so fussy. Any one seen the canned cow? And the sugar? Thanks. Jelly, you got my spoon?”

“Yes, I’m eating egg with it. Want it?”

“Well, scarcely,” replied Evan. “Let me take yours, Rob. These are dandy doughnuts, fellows.”

“They’re crullers,” said Jelly indistinctly by reason of the crowded condition of his mouth. “Cook said so.”

“What’s the difference between a cruller and a doughnut, anyway?” asked Evan.

“A doughnut is a cruller with a hole through it,” answered Malcolm.

“It’s a doughnut with a college education,” amended Rob.

“That’s an old one,” scoffed Malcolm.

“Doughnuts and crullers are just the same,” said Jelly. “It just depends where they live what they’re called. In some places they call them fried-cakes.”

“Well, I call them fine,” said Evan, biting into his second one. “A cruller by any other name would taste as good.”

“Suppose you toss a couple over here,” suggested Malcolm, “if you don’t want them all.”

“I do want them all,” was the reply, “but being generous I will allow you one.”

“You’ll allow me a couple more presently,” responded Malcolm. “Say, I should think there would be a big waste in making them this way; with holes in the middle, I mean.”

“Waste? Why?” asked Rob.

“Well, what becomes of the piece that’s cut out?”

The others laughed and Malcolm looked surprised.

“What’s the joke?”

“Why, they take the dough that’s cut out and make more crullers, you idiot,” said Rob. Malcolm considered a moment.

“Oh,” he said. “I never thought of that. I had an idea they threw that away.”

“Wasn’t there a story,” asked Evan, “about a man who got it into his head that if he could make the holes in doughnuts larger he’d make more money on them?”

“There was—and is,” answered Rob gravely. “There is also a conundrum about the reason why a miller wears a white hat. But if you had any respect for age you’d let them both alone.”

“Say, Rob,” said Jelly, “I should think you’d invent a cruller with a little box in the middle to hold raspberry jam. That would be swell, wouldn’t it?”

“Why raspberry?” asked Evan.

“Oh, I like raspberry best,” answered Jelly calmly. “In that way you’d be economizing space, Rob. It always make me feel badly to see all that empty place in the middle.”

“Well, you won’t have any empty place in your middle,” said Rob scathingly. “No wonder you’re fat, Jelly.”

Mr. George Washington Jell sighed comfortably. “Well,” he replied, “I’d rather be a little bit fat and have enough to eat, Rob.”

“How about football, though?” asked Malcolm. “I thought you told us that Hopkins thinks you’re too fat?”

“Oh, I’ll soon train down,” answered Jelly, reaching for another doughnut. “In a week or two I’ll be twelve pounds lighter.”

“Mercy!” Rob held up his hands in awe. “Why, we’ll hardly know you! Think of Jelly losing twelve pounds, fellows!”

“Twelve pounds of Jelly,” murmured Malcolm. “You’ll be a regular skeleton, Jelly.”

“You’ll get rid of another pound or two going down the mountain,” observed Evan.

“Mal, did I ever tell you about a fellow I knew back home who had a cocker spaniel?” asked Rob.

“No, I don’t think so. What about him?”

“Well, it was a fine dog and he wanted to enter him at the dog show.” Rob pushed his tin plate aside and stretched himself comfortably. “But when he had the dog weighed he was eight pounds too heavy. The show was to open the next morning and he didn’t know what to do. He tried starving the dog and in the evening he weighed him again, but he was still seven and a half pounds too heavy.”

“This is a pathetic tale,” muttered Malcolm.

“Well, he didn’t know what to do—”

“You said that before, Rob.”

“But he had an idea. He remembered that once he had seen a chap wrapped up in sweaters running along the road getting his weight down. So this chap, whose name was—”

“Smith,” suggested Evan.

“Shut up. His name was Jones. So Jones decided that if that would work with a man it ought to work with a dog. So after dinner he wrapped the dog—”

“What was the dog’s name?” asked Jelly.

“Smith,” said Evan again.

“The dog’s name was—was—I don’t remember.”

“That’s a crazy name,” commented Malcolm. “Why didn’t he call him I-Don’t-Care?”

“Say, do you want to hear this story or don’t you?” Rob demanded. They assured him that they did. “Well, shut up, then! Smith wrapped the dog in a big woolen sweater—”

“Jones, you mean.”

“No, the dog,” answered Rob irritably. “I mean Jones wrapped—”

“Smith,” said Evan.

“Wrapped the dog in a sweater and started out with him on a leash.”

“On a what?” asked Malcolm politely.

“On a leash; the dog was on a leash.”

“Oh! What was Smith on?”

Rob found the remains of a baked potato within reach and scored against Malcolm’s neck. While the latter was wiping away the fragments Rob went on.

“Well, he walked that dog and walked him. Took him away out into the country and back again into town; pulled him all around the city; dragged him eight times up and down the City Hall steps. By that time it was about two in the morning, and Jones—”

“Smith,” corrected Evan helpfully.

“And Smith—hang it, his name was Jones, I tell you! Jones was pretty nearly dead for sleep. He’d taken naps as he went along. Finally he came to a lunch-wagon and went in and got a cup of coffee. He gave some of it to the dog—”

“Oh, come now!” Evan protested. “Dogs don’t drink coffee!”

“This dog was very fond of coffee,” replied Rob with dignity.

“Of course,” agreed Malcolm. “Did you hear Rob say he was a coffee spaniel?”

“Well, that woke them both up and they went on walking.”

“Say, for goodness sake, Rob, get through walking!” begged Malcolm. “My legs are just aching already. Have them sit down for a minute, won’t you?”

“He walked that dog around until four o’clock in the morning,” declared Rob impressively, “and when he got him home he put him on the scales, and what do you think?”

“He’d gained another eight pounds,” said Evan.

“There wasn’t anything left but the collar,” guessed Jelly.

“No, but that dog had lost eight pounds exactly and was half a pound under the limit! What do you think of that?”

“I’d rather not tell you,” answered Malcolm evasively.

“And did he win a prize with him?” asked Jelly.

“N—no, he didn’t. You see, when he took him around to the show he found that he had walked two inches off the dog’s legs and they made him enter him as a dachshund.”

There was a deep and painful silence. Then Malcolm began to whistle softly and Evan reached out for the last doughnut and tossed it into Rob’s lap.

“You win,” he said.

That reminded Jelly of a story that he had heard his father tell. Moreover, he assured them seriously, it was a true story.

“Well,” sighed Rob, “go ahead with it and get it off your mind.”

Whether it was true or not, it was very long and somewhat complicated and the audience soon gave up trying to follow its intricacies. Rob went to sleep and snored shamelessly. This annoyed Jelly and he lost connection.

“And so—and so—Where was I?”

“The druggist was just filling the prescription,” replied Evan.

“Whereupon,” murmured Malcolm sleepily, “the goat climbed on to the counter and ate up the nail-files, shrieking in a high falsetto voice, ‘Death to tyrants!’ But see, who comes here? Ah, ’tis our hero! Vaulting nimbly upon the back of his restless steed Diamond Dick Tolliver drew his trusty bean-shooter and waving it above his head cried—”

“Oh, shut up, Malcolm! Can’t you let me tell my story?”

“Proceed,” breathed Malcolm sweetly. “Wake me when you’re through, Jelly.”

So Jelly went on. Ten minutes later he paused at the climax of his narrative.

“What do you think of that?” he asked beamingly. There was no reply: His three auditors were sound asleep. Jelly viewed them disgustedly one after another. Then he lay down on his back, put an arm under his head and followed the general example.