Giraffe was holding out, and explaining something that he had advanced;
but evidently he must have noticed the absence of the others, for he
soon asked:

"What's the good word, Allan; because I reckon you and our scout-master
have been taking a squint at the weather? I was just telling the rest
here that we won't get any wet with this blow, because all the signs
point that way, and as I said before. I'm getting to be an authority on
weather now-a-days.

"That was about what we thought," Allan told him.

"You mean that Thad is with me in my assertion, do you?" demanded
Giraffe; and when the other had nodded in the affirmative the tall scout
turned to Davy, Bumpus and Step Hen triumphantly, to add: "There, didn't
I tell you I could hit these weather changes on the handle every time.
When I warn you next time there's going to be a storm, better hurry to
get in out of the wet."

"I think it's a great pity you waste your precious time bothering about
what the weather is agoing to be, when we can't help it; and you might
be racking that really stupendous brain of yours adoing other things
worth while," Bumpus went on to remark.

"Huh! as what?" Giraffe wanted to know.

"Well, famines in the eating line, for one thing," spoke up the fat
scout, instantly. "S'pose now you'd told us we was going to run up
against hard times, in the way of a scarcity of grub two days back,
couldn't we just as well have dropped in to some town along the shore,