Myers, if you will have breakfast pretty early I'll be much obliged to
you."

Even Almira had never seen Dabney look quite so tall as he did at that
moment.





CHAPTER XXX.

DABNEY KINZER TRIES FRESH-WATER FISHING FOR THE FIRST TIME.


Conversation did not flourish at the supper-table that Friday evening.
There was a puzzled look on the faces of Mrs. Myers and her daughter,
and their three boarders seemed to be running a kind of race with each
other as to which of them should make out to be the most carefully
polite. As for poor Dick Lee, out there in the kitchen, the nearest he
came to breaking the silence was in a sort of smothered groan, and a
half-uttered determination to "git up good and early, an' dig dem
fellers de bes' worms dey is in de gardin."

There was talk enough in the room up stairs in the course of the
evening; but the door was closed, and there was no chance for any one in
the passage outside, no matter how silently he or she might go by, to
hear a distinct word of it.

"You see, boys," said Ford Foster, at the end of some extended remarks,