“Buster,” called Lanky, while he was on the outside, pressing the tacks in with the blade of a knife, “I’ll have to drive these in further, and I can’t reach them with my right hand. Will you get that left-handed hammer on the table in the kitchen?”
Buster Billings hurried to the rear of the house at once, and sought in all parts of the kitchen for the hammer. In the meanwhile the other three boys were enjoying the joke. Presently Buster returned.
“I can’t find it, Lanky. There isn’t any kind of hammer there.”
“Oh, well,” Lanky was thoroughly disgusted, “I’ll have to get it for myself. It’s a shame that a fellow can’t get any help from you guys.” With the words he strode, with seeming anger toward the rear, while Frank and Paul guffawed loudly.
“There’s no reason why he ought to get so sore at me.” Buster felt very hurt over Lanky’s actions.
Whereupon more loud laughing came from the two boys.
This job finished, they all turned to the general cleaning of the dining room and the living room, another large stick of wood having been thrown on the fire.
Night came on, and with it the wind rose high, whistling through the trees around the house and fairly howling as it hurried through the branches of the giant white pine at the side.
The boys discussed the temperature, wondering if it were dropping, for they looked forward to a tighter freezing of the lake.
“If this wind keeps up it might blow a lot of the snow off the lake.” Frank was planning for the next day. “That would make skating mighty fine, provided the temperature is low enough to freeze it harder.”