“Well, I shall be able to buy that stamp for the letter!”
Brock ceased whistling after his fourth load. I took a look at his face. It was pale and strained.
“Hadn’t you better take a breathing spell, Brock?” I suggested. “It comes hard when one isn’t used to it. That barrow wheels hard, too. We ought to have brought some wheel grease.”
“I guess I will sit down a few seconds,” agreed Brock. “It’s quite a lift—at first, but I think we’ll manage the job, don’t you?”
“We’ll try!” I commented, grimly.
So we passed the barrow from hand to hand, the loads growing smaller and smaller as the noon hour approached, and the need of rest and change becoming more and more imperative. When half-past eleven arrived I proposed that we eat our lunches; not so much for the mere satisfaction of hunger, but for the opportunity of absolute rest for an hour. Brock assented to the proposition the instant it had left my lips. In fact, he dropped his barrow in the middle of the plank; an act on which I commented by that fragment of an old song:
“For I’ve worked four hours this day, this day,
For I’ve worked four hours this day.
Keep your whiskers on, till the morning, John,
For I shan’t work another minute longer!”