IN CAMP

When they awoke in the morning they heard the steady patter of rain on their little shelter. The downpour, broken by the friendly trees, fell gently on the tent, but looking out they could see that the rain was coming down in torrents. The sky was dull and cheerless.

“Rain before seven, clear before eleven,” said Pee-wee.

“Only it’s half-past eight, do you call that logic?” laughed Townsend. “I bet Liz is good and wet; I should have turned the seats upside down and tied my rain-coat over the hood. No matter. She ought to squeak fine after this. Last year I had her singing the Star Spangled Banner after a three days’ rain. What shall we do; eat?” he asked, rubbing his eyes and surveying the woods. “How’d you sleep? Some rain, hey?”

“I’m going to start a fire and make coffee,” said Pee-wee.

“Now that’s what I call a real inspiration,” said Townsend, sleepily. “I didn’t hear the alarm clock, did you?”

“There isn’t any,” said Pee-wee.

“That’s probably why I didn’t hear it,” Townsend yawned. “Where are you going to get dry wood?”

“Didn’t you see me roll that piece of log under the tent last night?” Pee-wee asked him. “That’s one of the things you always have to do first of all in case it rains next day. Now where would you be if I hadn’t brought my belt-axe?”

“I’d be in tears,” said Townsend. “We haven’t got much gasoline to burn. We might fry some griddle-cakes on the engine I suppose. I wonder if we could beat eggs with the fan? You start getting things ready while I trot over and wake Liz up.”

He soon returned, reporting that the car was all right and better for sleeping in the fresh air. He found Pee-wee valiantly demolishing the small end of the log which he had thoughtfully put under cover the night before. A merry little fire was soon blazing away under a tree, defying the rain.

And pretty soon the fragrant odor of coffee permeated the damp air. If you ever hear any one say anything against coffee tell him that he has probably never been stalled in a little tent in the woods on a rainy day. If he continues to talk against it, don’t listen to him, walk away. He is like a man who would slander a life preserver.

Some people put an egg shell in coffee, and I think that is good. But a spool of linen thread is not so good. Pee-wee used a spool of linen thread in his coffee. At all events there was a spool of linen thread in the coffee-pot and several emergency buttons.

“Are these supposed to flavor it?” Townsend asked.

“They happened to be in there,” said Pee-wee.

“Hadn’t we better strain it for needles and hooks and eyes and things?”

“Don’t you know scouts have to economize space?” Pee-wee shouted. “You put one thing in another when you’re packing camping things. See if there’s a bottle of ink in it.”

Townsend fished around in the coffee-pot with a lead pencil and pronounced it free of other contents. They drank their coffee, one out of a collapsible metal cup, the other out of an empty mustard can. Coffee is very good in such receptacles. It should never be sipped from a respectable breakfast cup, never. But if you use a mustard can be sure that there are no pieces of chalk or crayon in it. These things are good in tracking and blazing, but not in coffee.

That morning, Pee-wee tried his hand at griddle-cakes, while his patrol leader gazed wistfully on. They were not half bad. And when you come right down to it, coffee out of tin cans, and griddle-cakes not too delicate, form a toothsome repast on a dull, rainy morning, when the drops patter down on your cosy little shelter and the little fire burns merrily outside, and the landscape is hazy and you have no forks or spoons. If you go to having forks and spoons you will spoil it all.