“I wish I had sowed wheat on the burn, I could have taken care of that before I went; but I think I’ll go back and get the molasses, and leave it here.”
“I think I can help you, neighbor. Here’s my Dan; he’s the master critter for hunting and trapping you ever saw—plagues me to death with his nonsense. He’d sit up two nights to shoot one coon. We arn’t much driven with work now, and shan’t be till you get back, and if you’ll let him use some of your traps, I know he’d be tickled to death to live in your camp and hunt and trap; and you may depend on it no wild critter will do any damage while he’s around, for he’d take the dog with him, and nothing can stir in the night but the dog will let him know it.”
“I should be very glad to have him, and will pay him.”
“The traps will be pay enough and more too.”
“I should like to have him pull my beans and thresh ‘em out.”
“Yes, he can do that, and dig the potatoes and put them in the pit; he can do it as well as not; he’ll have a great deal of idle time, and I don’t want him to get too lazy; and so you won’t need to go back after your ‘lasses.”
“It must be a great change to Miss Conly to leave a pleasant home and kind neighbors and come here, and I had thought of getting some hens. It would make it seem a little more like home to her to hear the hens cackle and the rooster crow, and have eggs to get; and if Dan is going to be there to feed ‘em, I can have ‘em as well as not.”
“We can find you in hens, and Dan can take ‘em down with him.”
“What are they worth apiece? I’ll take half a dozen.”
“Look here, neighbor, hens nor geese nor turkeys ain’t worth anything here ‘cept to eat; there’s no market for such things here. I perceive you have carpenter’s tools, and know how to use them, which none of us do. Take all the hens you want, for I believe we’ve got a hundred, and if you could make me a good ox-yoke I should be more than paid; and any little thing that you can’t do alone just call on the boys, and they or I will help you, and we will change about in that way. I can make things, to be sure—have ter—but it takes me forever, and then I’m ashamed to have any body see ‘em, only shoes. I can make a good shoe or boot, and I can tan a hide or skin as well as anybody.”