CHAPTER XIV.
BEN CONFIDES IN UNCLE ISAAC AND IS COMFORTED.
The party on the island sat by the camp fire, listening to the voices of their departing friends, till they died away in the distance.
“Who are you going to get to build your chimney, Ben?” asked Uncle Isaac.
“Joe Dorset.”
“I never’d get him; a poor man can’t afford to hire him; he came from Newburyport, and he’d be always heaving out, and telling how much better they have things in Massachusetts; growling about the stuff he has to work with, and can’t do anything without merchantable brick.”
“I don’t know anything about him,” said Ben, “only I’ve heard he is an excellent workman.”
“Well, so he is; but when you’ve said that you’ve said everything. He’ll have a great many long stories to tell, that’ll eat up his own time, and hinder other people. I like to hear a good story myself, and tell one too; but I always do it after work, and not to hinder work, in my own time, and not my employer’s; besides, he’s so lazy! He went fishing one year with John Strout, and he was so long hauling up a codfish that a dogfish eat him all up, and left nothing but the bare hooks to come to the top of the water.”
“Who shall I get?”
“Get Sam Elwell.”
“He ain’t a mason.”