“I’m agreed. What’s the dimensions?”
“I’ve got them here. Isaac has seen an English mast ship out there, and sent home her proportions. But you must build a two-story frame-house first to lodge your men. You’ll want fifty or sixty men before you get through.”
“I can get along with a log house—make it bigger. Some can sleep in the barn in warm weather. I want something else a great deal more than I do a frame-house.”
“What is that?” asked Ben.
“A saw-mill right on this brook, where I can saw all my deck, ceiling, outboard plank, and waterways.”
“That’s a fact,” said Uncle Isaac. “I go in for a mill. I’ll build in it, and work on it.”
“I hope you won’t have a wooden crank,” said Fred.
“Nor tread back with the foot,” said Ben, “like this old rattle-trap on the river.”
“There’s water and fall enough,” said Captain Rhines; “and we’ll have an iron crank if we send to England for it, and all the modern improvements. I move that Charlie, Ricker, Yelf, and Joe Griffin go to work hewing the timber; and that we send Uncle Isaac off to the westward to learn the new improvements, and come home and build it.”
Having agreed upon all these matters, they separated; and that is what became of Charlie’s farming that year.