to sleep in one, and the captain and the boy in the other. Then in the open space under the trees the fire was burning merrily. The kettle had boiled, and was standing steaming on the ground. Susan was melting a big pat of butter in the frying-pan. In a pudding-basin beside her she had six raw eggs. She had cracked the eggs on the edge of a mug and broken them into the basin. Their empty shells were crackling in the fire. Four mugs stood in a row on the ground.
“No plates today,” said Mate Susan. “We all eat out of the common dish.”
“But it isn’t a common dish,” said Roger. “It’s a frying-pan.”
“Well, we eat out of it anyway. Egg’s awful stuff for sticking to plates.”
She had now emptied the raw eggs into the sizzling butter, and was stirring the eggs and the butter together after shaking the pepper pot over them, and putting in a lot of salt.
“They’re beginning to curdle,” said Titty, who was watching carefully. “When they begin to flake, you have to keep scraping them off the bottom of the pan. I saw Mrs. Jackson do it.”
“They’re flaking now,” said Susan. “Come on and scrape away.”
She put the frying-pan on the ground, and gave everyone a spoon. The captain, mate, and crew of the Swallow squatted round the frying-pan, and began eating as soon as the scrambled eggs, which were very hot, would let them. Mate Susan had already cut four huge slices of brown bread and butter to eat with the eggs. Then she poured out four mugs of tea, and filled them with milk from a bottle. “There’ll be enough milk in the bottle for today,” mother had said, “but for tomorrow we must try to find you milk from a farm a little nearer than Holly Howe.” Then there was a big rice pudding, which had been brought with them on the top of