“I don’t see why Jake and Sam didn’t hurry back here to help us,” said one lumberman.
“That’s so,” agreed another. “It would have been a lot easier if they had been here.”
Just then the foreman looked up, after the hardest part of the work had been finished, and he said:
“There come Jake and Sam now.”
Surely enough, the chute builders were approaching.
“Well, you took your own time getting here,” said the foreman.
“Took our own time? What do you mean?” asked Jake.
“Didn’t you tell us to stay in the woods and finish making that new chute to send the logs down to the river?” asked Sam.
“Yes, but a while ago I sent the Curlytop boy to tell you to hurry back here and help us. We had an accident in the sawmill, but it’s all fixed now. Why didn’t you two come?”
“Because no one told us to,” was the answer.