“Come here, Ned Conly; this is worth coming all the way here for.”
“How glad I am, Bert, that we didn’t wait till they had got a good house; then we should have had to sleep in the best room, with a linen spread, all wove in patterns, on the bed, and curtains.”
“Yes, and had to wipe our feet every time we came into the house; but now” (and he turned a somersault on the bearskin) “we can get into bed with our boots on.”
After a most bountiful supper, for Dan had killed a wild turkey, they retired pretty thoroughly fatigued to their tent. In the morning Bert said,—
“Now, James, we want to go all over your place to-day, and see all you’ve got and all you’ve done, and talk and loll and fool round, and the next day we want to go over the next two places, above and below, and then we are going to work.”
“You are not going to do a stroke of work. I didn’t bring you up here for that; I suppose you could have done that just as well at home.”
“We are going to help thresh your grain,” said Ned.
“My neighbors have threshed it since I went away. You are going thirty miles up the creek with me in the birch to catch trout in a brook, and to hunt deer and perhaps a bear.”
“I go in for that,” said Bert; “but after that you need not think you are going to keep us from doing something; you are putting on too many airs, prosperity is injuring you. Remember, young man, you have been to school to both of us.”
They went on the hunt, and took Dan Prescott with them, had a glorious time, and Ned and Bert brought home a bearskin each; it is presumed they killed the bears.