CHAP. IX.[ToC]
HOW A BARN WAS BUILT.
Mike Marble, as I think I have said before, was a kind-hearted man. But he had his own way of doing every thing, and that way was very generally quite unlike most other people's way. No man ever liked better to do any body a good turn. But he had his crotchets about an act of charity, as well as about every thing else.
A neighbor went to him once, to ask him for some money to aid him in building a barn. The old one had burned down, and it was a great loss to him, he said. He hardly knew how he should get along, unless his neighbor loaned him a little money.
But Uncle Mike refused the neighbor's petition. "Money was scarce, very scarce." That was all the answer the unfortunate man could get from Mike Marble.
"This is strange enough," he mused in his own mind, as he walked away from Mr. Marble's door. "Strange enough! so kind-hearted and generous as he always has been, when any body was in distress."
The next day, however, bright and early, Uncle Mike yoked up his oxen, (some three pairs, I believe, including the steers, which needed something more than moral suasion to keep them straight,) fastened them to the cart, and posted off, with two or three men, to the saw mill. There he and his men loaded the cart with boards and planks. Then he drove straight to the house of the unfortunate neighbor, opened the great gate, without saying a word to any member of the family, went into the door yard with his load, and threw it off within a few yards of the spot where the old barn stood.