“The lad has got book-learning to help out experience, and it is when the two go together that the best results are obtained,” said Nathan in his deep voice. Then he went on to say: “If he is bossing the show I shan’t feel so tied and responsible. I’m willing enough to give labour, but I don’t want the burden of thinking and planning the whole business.”
After this there was nothing for it but that Pam should ask Don if he would take the lead in the sugaring, and in truth Don was very willing to accept the responsibility. He had been busy enough all the winter lumbering the black larch on his own land, for he had taken a farm near to The Corner which had dropped out of cultivation for nearly ten years, and it would require a tremendous lot of hard work and a considerable amount of money to make it a paying venture. But just for a few weeks, until the snows were melted, work was easy with him, and sugaring would be something of a holiday.
He came over one damp afternoon to go the round of the trees with Pam. The forest was full of the music of tinkling streams and falling water. Pam had rubbers over her boots, or she would have been foot-wet before she had gone ten steps, for it was like wading in a pond.
Taking the narrow trail, where now they had to walk high on the ridge of the drifted snow, they came out on to the old tote road; and following it for nearly half a mile, they descended a steep dip and plunged into a forest of maples.
“Are all these sugar maples?” demanded Pam. There was an inflection of awe in her voice, for it seemed to her that if all the trees she could see yielded maple sugar she would be in process of becoming a millionaire, or rather her grandfather would be, seeing that the property belonged to him and not to her.
“No, there is a lot of red maple here,” replied Don, whose gaze was searching the bare trunks with the eye of an expert.
“How can you tell them apart?” she asked, then sighed a little, because the more she knew of forest lore the more she found there was to learn.
“By formation largely,” he said, pointing out to her this and that difference in shape. “But if I were seriously at a loss there is one infallible test. Just drop a little sulphate of iron on to the wood, and if it is sugar maple it turns a greenish hue, but if it is red maple it goes a deep blue colour. But that would be quite an extreme test; it is easy enough to tell them apart as a rule.”
“They look dreadfully alike to me,” she said ruefully; then burst out, “Oh, how I wish Jack were here! How he would enjoy all the fun of the sugaring!”
“Can’t he get here in time?” Don was counting and measuring, and so he asked his question in an abstracted fashion. Of course it would be to Pam’s advantage to have her brother to help, for it would mean one share of sugar saved, seeing that every worker from outside would take from her profits.