“But what?”
“Do you think I want to take you into the woods to suffer?”
“I have not the least idea of suffering unless I am called to. Then, I trust, I shall be supported. Tell me honestly, cannot such a camp be made comfortable? You know well enough what I mean by that?”
Thus appealed to, James hesitated, looked every way but at her, and finally said,—
“It is true that the camp can be made a shelter from rain and snow, and can be kept warm.”
“Warm enough?”
“Yes, hot as an oven, for it is not much larger,” said James, with a groan; “but what a hole to take you from a good home and put you into.”
“I was born in a log house and passed my childhood in it, and one not much better than that camp, nor much larger, and there were seven of us. Sister and William tell of what they have been through. Father and mother and our boys are always telling the neighbors of how much William and Mary have been through and how resolute they are and faculized. I mean to have something to tell of and be praised for. Come, promise, you may put down a floor in the camp and make it three poles higher, that I may have room for my loom and spinning wheel, and that the wheels and loom may stand firm on the floor. I don’t care whether there’s any chimney or not. We didn’t have any in our log house for years, and the hole in the roof was about as good, for the clay was all the time falling off the cob-work and dropping into mother’s pots and frying-pan.”
“You won’t want to stay there long, I hope?”
“Only till we can see our way clear to build a log house.”