Читать книгу The Boy Scout Pathfinders; Or, Jack Danby's Best Adventure онлайн

14 страница из 35

“What you tink, by gar?” the latter was shouting as they got within hearing distance. “You tink I am goin’ to cook for dees here bunch of hungry pigs, an’ den help you wash dishes, also? Mon Dieu! What you take me for—what you call zee easy mark?”

“There, there, Frenchy, keep your hair on!” replied the cookee, a red-headed lad about the same age as the Scouts, and then added, with an exasperating grin, “If I couldn’t cook anything better than the sour dough biscuits and the sinkers you turn out, I’d be ashamed to take the boss’s good money! Why don’t you get a job in New York driving an ash cart? You’d look nifty in one of them white uniforms, and then you wouldn’t have a chance to kill off any more poor lumbermen with your bum grub! That’s what I’d do if I was you!”

This seemed to drive the excitable Frenchman nearly frantic.

“Pig! Dog! Vile one!” he screamed. “Is it zat you would mock me, child of ze gutter?”

The grinning boy appeared to take pleasure in teasing the peppery cook, and finally the latter seemed to go quite mad with rage. He grasped a huge wooden spoon from a table beside the door, and made a clumsy rush at his assistant. The nimble boy easily eluded him, however, but once or twice let the cook get so near him that the little man felt encouraged to keep up the chase in the hope of finally catching him. At last his breath gave out, and he came to a standstill and shook his fist wildly in futile rage.