“I’ll advance you the money, so that you can get a little powder and shot. You can use peas and little stones part of the time: they will go wild, but it will help you to get used to hearing a gun go off, and learning to take sight, and hold her steady. Our folks will want some baskets in the spring, and when I get through I will take them; but I will let you have the money now.”
“Thank you a thousand times! What a good country this is, and how good everybody is!” said the happy boy. “Everybody seems to want to help me; it ain’t so in England.”
“That is because you are a good boy, and try to help yourself and others.”
“There’s one other thing I must have, because I want it to make baskets—that is a knife.”
“To be sure; a boy without a knife is no boy at all; he’s like a woman without a tongue.”
“Then I’ll have some bits, and a bit-stock, and a fine-toothed saw. O, if I only had the tools, wouldn’t I make things for mother! I’d make a front door, and ceil up the kitchen, and cover up the chimney, and make a closet, and a mantelpiece, and finish off a bedroom for father and mother, and shingle the roof.”
At this they all burst into peals of laughter.
“Well, Charlie,” said Ben, “you’ve laid out work enough for five or six years. You had better go to bed now, and all the rest of us, for it is past ten o’clock. I am sure I don’t know where this evening has gone to.”