“Do let me know what it is.”
“I’m going to after supper.”
CHAPTER XII.
GENIUS STRUGGLING WITH DIFFICULTIES.
When the meal was concluded, the boys all surrounded Ben, and Charlie laid the whole matter before him. To their great delight and no little surprise, Ben gave his unqualified assent, told them they had a great and difficult enterprise before them, but that he admired their resolution, and to go ahead. When he concluded, there was a dead silence. Charlie was completely nonplussed, for he had arranged a series of arguments to meet the objections he supposed his father would make; and though he hoped, with the aid of his mother, to carry the point, he expected and was prepared to exert his powers of persuasion to the utmost. This hearty approval quite disconcerted him, and he was very much in the situation of Uncle Isaac, when he took Sally over to Elm Island to see her future home, prepared for tears, and, to his utter amazement, was greeted with a hearty, ringing laugh.
“But, father,” asked Charlie, “do you think we’ve got money enough?”
“Yes, indeed, plenty to begin with; you’ve got enough, upon the largest calculations, to set her up, plank her, get out all your deck plank, water-ways and spars, and have them seasoning;” and without paying the least attention to Charlie’s “ifs” and “ands,” Ben went right on, to inquire where he was going to build her.
“At my shore,” was the reply.
“But,” said Isaac, “ought we not, I especially, to ask your father’s advice? He was my earliest friend, set me agoing, and has always been interested in me. I shouldn’t have been alive to-day if it had not been for him.”
“Certainly; but he will approve of it; so we can go on and talk.”
“Mr. Rhines,” said Fred, “isn’t she a monster?”