“But,” said Charlie, “after it grows up there will be nothing to keep us from drinking.”
“It will be many a year before that hole grows up, for I’ve bored through the sap. I expect by that time you will have seen so much of the bad effects of drinking spirit, and the benefits of letting it alone, that no power on earth would persuade you to do it.”
Sally now blew the horn for supper. As they went with Uncle Isaac to his boat, Fred said to him, “You know we’ve got a whole week for a holiday; we have been so much more used to work than play, and have so many things in our heads, that we don’t know what to do first. If you was a boy, like us, what would you do to-morrow, to have the best time?”
“Well, I’ll tell you, and see what you think of it. Mr. Yelf is going to be put into the ground to-morrow, and I’ve come on to let Ben and Sally know, that they may go over to the funeral. He has left his family miserably poor. His only son is in the Ark with Captain Rhines. The neighbors are going to send in enough for the present. Suppose, while we are gone to the funeral, you boys should go and catch a good lot of fish,—enough to last Mrs. Yelf all winter. When she was well to do, before he took to drinking, nobody went hungry in her neighborhood. I’ll be on the beach, in Captain Rhines’s cave, when you come back, and will split and salt the fish; there’s a flake to dry them on, and no Pete Clash to throw them in the water. I will cure them; and when they are done you can take them to her.”
“We don’t want anything better than that,” said the boys.
“I’d rather do that,” said Fred, “than play at the best play in the world; you are real good to put it into our heads;” and he threw his arms around his friend’s neck.
“But,” asked Charlie, “how shall we know where to go? I know where to go for hake and winter cod; but it’s too late for hake, and the winter fish have not come in.”
“There’s rock cod on the ledges; and I can tell John, who knows the shores and islands, so that you can find them. You know, John, that lone spruce on the end of Birch Pint?”
“Yes, sir.”