“All right,” says I, but I was feeling sort of hopeless. “Let’s git at it. We’re losin’ time.”
“We w-won’t lose any more,” Mark says. “Has your uncle got a shovel?”
“I dun’no’,” says I; “and if he has it’s out in the barn.”
“Then we g-g-got to make one.”
“How?”
“Out of a board. Whittle it. We better make a c-couple while we’re at it.”
There was a big soap-box in the kitchen that Uncle Hieronymous used for a sort of table. Mark decided this would do all right, so we pulled it apart, and he and I set to work whittling shovels out of it. They were pretty clumsy, but Mark said they were all right, and so long as they suited him they were good enough for me.
“N-n-now,” says he, “we want a hatchet.”
“It’s in the cupboard,” says I. “What you want of it?”
“P-p-pry up a board in the floor,” says he.