It is true he did serenely
fold his hands and wait, between times. Then what an event to see
him lift the smoking cover and try the bird with a fork--" to see
if the duck is relenting," he explains. At a certain time he
arises from a grave psychological discussion to rake out hollow
places in the coals where he buries potatoes and onions.
"The baking of an onion," he declares, "takes all the conceit out
of him. He is sweet and humble after his baptism of fire." Then
the talk soars above ducks and onions, until he gives one of the
idlers permission to prepare the salad and lay the table.
For a dinner to remember all one's days, commend me to a thoroughly
relented duck; a mealy, ash-baked potato; an onion (yea, several of
them) devoid of conceit, and well buttered and salted; and a salad
of Slabsides celery and lettuce; with Riverby apples and pears, and
beechnuts to complete the feast--beechnuts gathered in October up
in the Catskills, gathered one by one as the chipmunk gathers them,
by the "Laird of Woodchuck Lodge," as he is called on his native
heath, though he is one and the same with the master of Slabsides.
We hear no sounds all the day outside the cabin but the merry calls
of chickadees, until in mid-afternoon an unwelcome "Halloa!" tells
us the wagon is come to take us down to Riverby.
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