skillet was brought from Archie's house, together with some dishes and
a coffee-pot, and Dan Sullivan brought some more dishes, and six eggs
from his nests under the barn. The boys were obliged to make several
trips to and from the houses, but finally nearly everything was ready,
and the eggs were carefully cooked by Archie, who was really a good
housekeeper, from long experience in the kitchen with his mother. Some
potatoes were fried in the grease remaining in the skillet after the
eggs were cooked, and then the feast began. The eggs may have been
rather black with grease, and the potatoes were certainly not done,
but the boys all pronounced it the finest meal of their lives,
notwithstanding the bitter coffee, and the dirty bread, which had been
allowed to fall into the gutter beside the railway track. They were
eating in their own house, and they had cooked in the open air, "just
like tramps," Harry Rafe said, and it was little wonder that they
enjoyed the novel experience.

The only trouble came when the meal was finished. No one wanted to
wash the dishes, and, finally, it was decided to return them to their
respective kitchens just as they were, and to let them be washed with
the rest of the dinner dishes at home. And this decision came near
putting an end to Hut Club dinners, for both Mrs. Dunn and the Widow
Sullivan were determined not to wash any more dirty dishes from the
hut.

When the meal was over, the boys lounged about the hut, and Dan
Sullivan brought a lot of things from his sister's playhouse with
which to furnish it more suitably. Archie Dunn brought a lot of hay
from the loft in his mother's barn, and when a piece of old carpet was
spread upon it it made an acceptable couch. A piece of old carpet was
laid in front of the hut, too, where the boys could sit and watch the