“No, it wasn’t. It was just a little stick thing he held in one hand,—two sticks, one of them whirled on the other.”
“Give me your knife,” said Marian, “and, Jennie, hand me that piece of driftwood there by you; no, the other one. Was the stick he had as long as that, Delbert?”
“Just about, but it was nice and smooth.”
“This will be nice and smooth when I get through with it. You just tangle some of that fiber the way the old Indian had his.”
Delbert began picking it apart and dropping it careless and crisscross.
“You can just bet,” he burst out, “you can just bet your boots, if I ever have a chance to see anybody else doing anything again, I’ll see what they are doing; don’t care what it is.”
“That is the best way,” admitted Marian. “There are a whole lot of things, simple things, that would help us a great deal if we only knew how to do them. Can’t you remember anything more Clarence said about this?”
Delbert wrinkled his brows. “There was something about a balance-wheel. What is a balance-wheel?”
“I don’t know that I can explain it, though I know what it is myself. Maybe I can show you pretty soon. Hand me that little smooth stick about a foot and a half long, that one with the knob on the end. Yes, I think that will do nicely.”
She had shaved and whittled the piece of driftwood till it was about a foot long, an inch thick, and two and one half inches wide at one end and tapering to a point at the other, which point she whittled into a button-like knob. Just back of the knob she made a hole big enough to slip the second stick into. It slipped down, but was prevented from slipping clear off by the knob on the end of it. Then, grasping this second stick, she began to whirl it so that the driftwood stick whirled round and round on it.