thinner?" he asked anxiously.

Sahwah scrutinized, him closely for signs of reduction and decided he
_might_ possibly be half a pound thinner than when she saw him last.
Slim sighed and looked pensive and Sahwah had hard work to keep her face
straight.

"But what on earth was all that racket as we came up?" she asked, unable
to restrain her curiosity on that point any longer. "What were you
chasing the chicken for?"

Slim's eye roved regretfully back toward the trees among which the
chicken had vanished, and the Captain answered for him.

"You see," he exclaimed, "today is Slim's birthday and we were going to
celebrate by having a chicken dinner. So Slim went out to buy a chicken
and came back with a live one. Then he didn't have the heart to chop its
head off, and was trying to drown it in a barrel of water when you came
up. By the way, Slim, where is it now?"

Slim pointed to the bushes with an expression of chagrin on his fat
face. "It's gone," he said with a sigh of regret. "A dollar and
eighty-seven cents' worth of chicken stew running loose on the
landscape."

"But it wasn't the nerve I lacked to chop its head off," he added,
looking reproachfully at the Captain. "It was the hatchet. You see," he
explained, "we didn't exactly come prepared to catch our meals on the
hoof, so to speak, and all I had to chop his head off with was the
can-opener on my pocket knife, and that wouldn't work, so I _had_ to
drown him."

"Oh, you funny boys!" said Sahwah, laughing uncontrollably.

"I think you might have helped me hold him down," said Slim to the
Captain in an injured tone.

"I couldn't," replied the Captain gravely. "The butter got overcome with
the heat and I was reviving it with a fan."

"Oh, you babes in the woods, you!" said Sahwah, with another burst of
laughter. "You must be having the time of your lives."

"We are," replied the Captain. "Won't you stay to dinner? There isn't
anything to eat but a can of tomato soup, but you're welcome to that."

"Oh, we hadn't better," replied Sahwah, "they will be wondering at home
what has become of us, and besides, it would make too much trouble for
you."

"Too much trouble!" snorted the Captain. "That's just like a girl. As
if a girl ever cared how much trouble she made for a fellow! Come on and
stay, we want you. We're lonesome."

Thus pressed, the girls accepted the invitation, and pretty soon they
were all sitting in a circle under the trees with cups and s