“Get up there,” I cried, “and ’tend to breakfast!  No pretending you’re sick this morning.”

“All right!” came Jack’s voice, cheerfully.  “Certainly.  No need of your getting excited, though.  You see, I really wasn’t hungry last night, or I’d have got supper.”

“But we were hungry!” answered Ollie.  “I don’t think I was ever much hungrier in my life; and then to get nothing but a pint of gooseberries!  I could eat my hat this morning!”

“I’m sorry,” said Jack, coming out; “but I can’t cook unless I’m hungry myself.  The hunger of others does not inspire me.  I gave you all there was.  Your hunger ought to have inspired you to do something with those gooseberries.”

“I’d like to know what sort of a meal you’d have got up with a can of gooseberries?”

“Why, my dear young nephew,” exclaimed Jack, “if I’d been awakened to action I’d have fricasseed those gooseberries, built them up into a gastronomical poem; and made a meal of them fit for a king.  A great cook like I am is an artist as much as a great poet.  He—­”

“Oh, bother!” I interrupted; “the gooseberries are gone.  There’s the grouse Ollie shot yesterday.  Do something with that for breakfast.”

Jack disappeared in the wagon, and began to throw grouse feathers out the front end with a great flourish.  The poor horses were much dejected, and stood with their heads down.  They had eaten but little of the hay.  Water was what they wanted.

“We must hitch up and go on without waiting for breakfast,” I said to Ollie.  “It can’t be far to water now, and they must have some.  Jack can be cooking the grouse in the wagon.”

So we were soon under way, keeping a sharp lookout, for any signs of a house or stream of water.  We had gone five or six miles, and were descending into a little valley, when there came a loud whinny from Old Blacky.  Sure enough, at the foot of the hill was a stream of water.  The pony ran toward it on a gallop, and as soon as we could unhitch the others they joined her.  They all waded in, and drank till we feared they would never be able to wade out again.  Then they stood taking little sips, and letting their lips rest just on the surface and blinking dreamily.  We knew that they stood almost as much in need of food as of water, as they had had nothing but the hay since the noon before.  There was a field of corn half a mile away, on a side-hill, but no house in sight.

“I’m going after some of that corn,” I said to the others.  “If I can’t find the owner to buy it, then I’ll help myself.”

I mounted the pony and rode away.  There was still no house in sight at the field, and I filled a sack and returned.  The horses went at their breakfast eagerly.  But twice during the meal they stopped and plunged in the brook and took other long drinks; and at the end Old Blacky lay down in a shallow place and rolled, and came out looking like a drowned rat.