“Yes. And the other day I went to the Mint and saw a lot. Mr. Hale, the gentleman I met at the Custom House, gave me a card. It’s funny, Mundon, how different everything there looked to me from the last time I was there. Every schoolboy in this town goes, and of course I went; but it didn’t seem to me that I could be the same boy who’d been there. Everything interested me so much more this time.”
Mundon had been marking a circle in the center of the floor.
“Now, Ben,” he said, “we’re ready for the corner-stone, and you’re the proper person to lay it. You just git one of those bricks and put it here.” He struck the center of the circle a blow with his spade.
“I didn’t know you could corner a circle,” said Ben, as he placed a brick upon the spot indicated.
“You kin corner anythin’, if you only find out how to do it. There,” he added, with satisfaction, “the first brick’s laid. Now, she’ll go a-hummin’!”
“Let me help you,” said Ben. “It’s more interesting than building the mule-shed. I can fix that by-and-by.”
“All right.”
Mundon watched Ben lay the bricks.
“How clumsy I am!” the latter exclaimed when the bricks refused to lie evenly. “I’ve often watched bricklayers at work. It looks as easy as breathing; but it isn’t,—not by a long sight!”