It was a sorry rescue. The cart was broken, but it could be easily mended. The much-longed-for wheaten flour appeared in the shape of a sack of soiled pulp, which no one would think of swallowing. The coffee might be dried. The tea was not altogether past hope. Sugar, salt, and starch, were melted into one mass. Mr. Temple’s spices were supposed to be by this time perfuming the stream two miles below; his wax candles were battered, so that they could, at best, be used only as short ends; and the oil for his hall lamps was diffusing a calm over the surface of the stream. Mrs. Sneyd asked her husband whether some analogous appliance could not be found for the proprietor’s ruffled temper, when he should hear of the disaster.
The news could not be long in reaching him, for the other party of squirrel-hunters, bringing with them all the remaining women and children of the village, appeared from the forest, and the tidings spread from mouth to mouth. As soon as Temmy saw that Uncle Arthur was standing still, and looking round him for a moment, he put one of his mistimed questions, at the end of divers remarks.
“How many squirrels have you killed, uncle? I do not think you can have killed any at all; we saw so many as we came up here! Some were running along your snake fence, uncle; and grandpapa says they were not of the same kind as those that run up the trees. But we saw a great many run up the trees, too. I dare say, half a dozen or a dozen. How many have you killed, uncle?”
“Forty-one. The children there will tell you all about it.”
“Forty-one! And how many did David kill? And your whole party, uncle?”
Arthur gave the boy a gentle push towards the sacks of dead squirrels, and Temmy, having no notion why or how he had been troublesome, amused himself with pitying the slaughtered animals, and stroking his cheeks with the brushes of more than a hundred of them. He might have gone on to the whole number bagged,—two hundred and ninety-three,—if his attention had not been called off by the sudden silence which preceded a speech from uncle Arthur.
“Neighbours,” said Arthur, “I take the blame of this mischance upon myself. I will not say that some of you might not have reminded me to bridge the Creek, before I spent my time and money on luxuries that we could have waited for a while longer; but the chief carelessness was mine, I freely own. It seems a strange time to choose for asking a favour of you——”
He was interrupted by many a protestation that his neighbours were ready to help to bridge the Creek; that it was the interest of all that the work should be done, and not a favour to himself alone. He went on:—
“I was going to say that when it happens to you, as now to me, that you wish to exchange the corn that you grow for something that our prairies do not produce, you will feel the want of such a bridge as much as I do now; though I hope through a less disagreeable experience. In self-defence, I must tell you, however, how little able I have been till lately to provide any but the barest necessaries for myself and my men. This will show you that I cannot now pay you for the work you propose to do.”
He was interrupted by assurances that nobody wanted to be paid; that they would have a bridging frolic, as they had before had a raising frolic to build the surgeon’s tavern, and a rolling frolic to clear Brawn’s patch of ground, and as they meant to have a reaping frolic when the corn should be ripe. It should be a pic-nic. Nobody supposed that Arthur had yet meat, bread, and whisky to spare.