“What is that?”
“Acorns. There’s a master sight of acorns and beech-nuts on the whole of that range along the shore, and hog-brakes in the swales. Hogs can get their living in the woods, and, by clamming on the beach, all the summer and fall.”
“Won’t the bears kill ’em?”
“Once in a while one; but then you can kill the bear, and he’ll be worth as much as the hog. I would rather have ten bears round than one wolf.”
“You know, Charlie,” said Hannah Murch, “bear’s grease is good to make boys limber to wrestle. If you had served my bed-clothes as you did Sally’s, I don’t know what I should have done to you.”
“I would have spoilt all the beds in the house for the sake of throwing Henry Griffin.”
“It appears to me you are beginning in good season to get a farm. You are not going to housekeeping?”
“The sooner the better,” said Uncle Isaac. “When a rat gets a hole, he carries everything to it.”
“No, Mrs. Murch, nothing of that kind; but I do want a piece of the soil that I can walk over and call my own, and have crops of my own, that nobody can take from me. I love to work with tools; but I love the earth that God made, and the woods. I love that spot, and am afraid I shall lose it if I don’t get it now. If I can only know it’s mine, that’s enough. Mrs. Murch, I think there’s something substantial about the earth.”