THE SWEETEST THING IN THE FOREST
Father Thrift spent the next few days in making wooden pails, in which to gather the maple sap.
What a lot of measuring and sawing and fitting and finishing it takes to make a few pails!
Shaggy Bear helped as much as he could. But bears are such clumsy things!
Finally one day Father Thrift said to Shaggy: “Now everything is ready. We have our spouts with which to draw the sap from the trees. And we have the wooden pails and some earthen crocks I made from clay last summer, in which to gather it.
“There is a large iron kettle we will use for boiling the sap down into sirup and sugar.
“To-morrow we will tap our trees.”
“Why to-morrow?” asked the bear. “That seems too long to wait. Why not to-day?”
“Because,” replied Father Thrift, “everything depends on time. There isn’t time enough left to-day. To-morrow we will start work real early. And to get up early to-morrow we must get to bed early to-night.”
“I don’t see how I shall be able to sleep at all,” grumbled the bear.
But in a few moments he was fast asleep where he sat.
He was a funny fellow!
Still, Father Thrift did not mind. He liked the quiet. When it was quiet he could think. In that he was quite different from many people, who like only to talk.
And he thought to himself: “Suppose that each person wastes one hour a day. A hundred days, a hundred hours. Multiply that by the number of people in the world—”
But the figures were too large even for Father Thrift to count up.
“If every one would use that hour each day in reading a good book, or in thinking, or in doing something else that is useful, how much better the world would be in another hundred years!”
Father Thrift sat and thought for a whole hour.
Then he waked the bear and each went to his own bed to rest for the night.
What a funny sight it was—a man and a bear sleeping side by side in the same room!
Early the next morning Father Thrift and the bear went to the maple grove to tap their trees.
Father Thrift bored holes in the tree trunks. Then he pounded a little spout into each hole for the sap to run through.
As they had no handles on their pails and crocks, they could not hang them on the spouts. Instead they set them down in the snow under the spouts.
The sun was getting warm, and was drawing up the sap from the roots of the tree into its branches. Soon you could hear it drip, drip, dripping into the pails and the crocks.
Shaggy Bear was too astonished to talk. He put out his paw, and a great drop of shining yellow maple sap fell on it. Then he licked his paw. Then he grunted, a funny bear grunt of surprise and pleasure.
Mmmmmm! It was good! It was sweet, truly. And what a delicious flavor it had!
The bear put out his paw again and again. And how he did lick the sap off it! My, oh, my! it was sweet! Not even the honey of the bee tasted so good. It was like nothing else in the whole forest.
Meanwhile Father Thrift was arranging his kettle and pans and building a fire.
“Now let us pour all the sap into one pail,” he said, “and perhaps we shall have enough to start boiling.”
“Oh, but that may spoil it!” cried Shaggy Bear.
“The sap is made sweeter by boiling,” said Father Thrift. But the bear did not see how that could be.
When the sap began to boil, Father Thrift told Shaggy to stir it, so that it would not burn.
Suddenly the bear began jumping about and crying: “Father Thrift, come here, come here!”
Father Thrift ran over to see what had happened.
Shaggy was all excitement.
“Look!” he cried. “Look in the kettle! We had much there. Now we have little. I told you the fire would spoil it!”
“No,” replied Father Thrift, smilingly, “the fire has not spoiled anything. When the sap boils, the water in it goes away in steam. And the longer it boils, the more the water goes away.
“This time we will not let it boil so very long, and then we shall have sirup. But the next kettle of sap we will boil longer and then we shall have maple sugar.”
When the sirup grew thick, Father Thrift said, “Taste!” And the bear tasted.
“Oh, Father Thrift,” he cried in delight, “it is the best thing I have ever tasted! Truly, the boiling improves it.”
Then when the maple sugar was done, Father Thrift called Shaggy.
“Taste this,” he said.
Ah, how good it was! Nothing like it had ever gone into Shaggy Bear’s mouth before. Never had he tasted such sweetness.
And, oh, what a wonderful meal they had that night! Father Thrift made golden corn cakes, and he and Shaggy ate the hot cakes with fresh maple sirup poured over them.
The bear grew thoughtful after supper.
“Now I know why I used to get into so much trouble,” he said. “I have had too much idle time on my hands.
“After this I will work hard and learn. I—I think I could help you a lot, Father Thrift. Will—you—let—me—stay—if—I—do?”
“I shall be glad to have you stay, always,” said Father Thrift.
And the bear was so overjoyed at what Father Thrift said that he cried.
