“I don’t think it would make any difference, if it was heavy. And, besides, it might be made of wood, and that wouldn’t be heavy.”
“O, wood wouldn’t do,” said the boy.
Now it happened that while they had been talking, the boy had gone on driving in his wooden wedge into the cleft that the iron one had made, and it had been gradually splitting the log open more and more. So that just as the boy was saying that “a wooden wedge wouldn’t do,” Rollo was actually seeing with his own eyes that it would do; for at that moment the boy gave the last blow, and the halves of the log came apart and fell over, one to one side, and the other to the other.
“Why, there,” said Rollo, “you have split the log open with a wooden wedge.”
“O, that is because I had an iron one in first,” said the boy.
“What difference does that make?” said Rollo.
“A great deal of difference,” said the boy.
“But what difference?” persisted Rollo.
“I don’t know exactly what difference,” said the boy; “only I know you can’t do any thing with a wooden wedge until you have first opened a seam with an iron one.”