Paul felt very sorry for Mr. Welles, and shook his head pityingly as he went off for more firewood.

When he had collected a lot, he began to lay the sticks.  He did it just as Father had showed him, but it seemed lots harder to get them right.  And it took a lot more than one match to get it started.  He didn’t have a bit of breath left in him, by the time he finally got it going.  And my, weren’t his hands black!  But he felt very much set up, all the same, that he had done it.  In his heart Paul knew that there was nothing anybody could do which he could not.

They hung the slimpsy slices of bacon from forked sticks, Paul showing Mr. Welles how to thread his on, and began to cook them around the edges of the fire, while the two little trout frizzled in the frying-pan.  “I’m so glad we got that last one,” commented Paul.  “One wouldn’t have been very much.”

“Yes, it’s much better to have one apiece,” agreed Mr. Welles.

When the bacon was done (only burned a little at the edges, and still soft in the thicker places in the center of the slice), and the fish the right brown, and ’most shrunk up to nothing, they each of them put a trout and a piece of bacon on his slice of bread and butter, and gracious! didn’t it taste good.

“You must have done this before,” said Mr. Welles, respectfully; “you seem to know a good deal about camping.”

“Oh, I’m a good camper, all right,” agreed Paul.  “Mother and I have gone off in the woods, lots of times.  When I was littler, I used to get spells when I was bad.  I do still, even now, once in a while.”

Mr. Welles did not smile, but continued gravely eating his bread and bacon, his eyes on the little boy.

“I don’t know what’s the matter.  I feel all snarled up inside.  And then the first thing you know I’ve done something awful.  Mother can tell when it first gets started in me, the least little teenty bit. How can she tell?  And then she takes me off camping.  She pretends it’s because she’s feeling snarled up, herself.  But it’s not.  She never is.  Why not?”

He considered this in silence, chewing slowly on a vast mouthful of bread.  “Anyhow, we leave the little children with Toucle, if she’s there,” (he stopped here an instant to inspect Mr. Welles to make sure he was not laughing because he had called Elly and Mark the “little children.”  But Mr. Welles was not laughing at him.  He was listening, really listening, the way grown-ups almost never did, to hear what you had to say.  He did like Mr. Welles.  He went on,) “or if Toucle’s off somewheres in the woods herself, we leave them down at the Powers’ to play with Addie and Ralph, and we light out for the woods, Mother and I. The snarleder up I feel, the further we go.  We don’t fish or anything.  Just leg it, till I feel better.  Then we make a fire and eat.”

He swallowed visibly a huge lump of unchewed bread, and said, uncorking a thermos bottle, “I asked Mother to put up some hot coffee.”