"Here we are, boys! splendid place this! Trees all around, and the ground carpeted with beautiful soft moss."
"All but the soft," growled Richard, jumping up, and making a variety of wry faces. "Only look what a great thorn I have sat down upon. I'm half killed. I wonder what thorns were made for?"
"For four-legged gentlemen, with very long ears," answered Arthur. "They are perfectly devoted to them. I think it's very odd you should be so fond of thorns, as you are not a donkey."
"Fond--fiddlesticks! Let a fellow alone, can't you?"
"Don't tease him, Arthur," cried Charlie. "Here, I say, all of you, guess this: Mr. Martingale has ten fine horses, and there are only twenty-four feet among them all."
"Twenty four feet!" said Harry; "impossible! You say they are fine horses, and ten of them. Every horse has four feet, and four times ten are forty--that's certain."
"Perhaps," said little George, "some of them are a new style of horse; six have the right number of feet, making the twenty-four, and the rest crawl on their bellies, like snakes."
"Goodness! how absurd!" exclaimed Arthur. "I have heard of Mr. Barnum's woolly horse, and a saw-horse, and a chestnut horse, and a horse-chestnut; and a flying-horse, and a horse-fly; and a clothes-horse, and a horse-cloth; and a rocking-horse. But a snake-horse is something new."
"Give it up?" said Charlie. "Suppose you alter the spelling a little."
"Oh! I have it!" shouted Arthur. "The horses had twenty _fore_ feet, and they also had twenty _hind_ feet. That's the best catch I ever heard. Just see, fellows, what comes of being head-boy in spelling-class. I'm the boy for learning! I dare say Dr. Addup is crying his eyes out, because it is vacation, and he won't see me for a month."
"I've got twenty-four appetites," said Richard; "when is the plum-pudding coming up?"
"The fish for the first course, and here they are," said Charlie.
"But I don't like raw fish," said George; "and where is the fire to cook 'em?"
"Don't be in a hurry," said the captain. "I'll fix that in a minute; I know all about it--read it in a book; all you have to do, is, to find two sticks, and rub them together, and there's your fire right off."
But our young gipsy soon found the difference between a fire with two sticks in a book, and a fire with two sticks in a wood. He rubbed his two sticks together, until _he_ was in a perfect blaze with the exertion, but the blaze he wanted would not come.