“It is very difficult,” replied Jonas, “to have any thing to do with charcoal, without getting blacked with it. You can hardly look at it without crocking your face.”
“O Jonas,” said James, “I could, I know.”
“Then, besides,” continued Jonas, “you can’t brush the sulphur off your clothes. If you once get it on, some of it will stay, and your clothes will always smell of sulphur whenever you come near a fire. I don’t think that your mother would be willing that you should have any thing to do with sulphur and charcoal.”
“I mean to ask her,” said Rollo.
Rollo went in to ask his mother, but he found that tea was ready, and so he and James went in and took their places at the tea-table. When the boys proposed their plan of making gunpowder, they found Rollo’s mother, as Jonas had supposed, quite averse to any such operations. However, when his father came in and heard their conversation on the subject, he said that he would take charge of the business, and then his mother would have no objection.
“Well, sir,” said Rollo, “I’m glad of that; for perhaps Jonas wouldn’t know how to make it.”
“He can prepare the materials, at any rate,” said his father. “So, after tea, you may go out and ask him to get three tea-cups, and to put about three or four tablespoonfuls of sulphur in one, and of saltpetre in another, and charcoal in another. Only the saltpetre and the charcoal must be pulverized.”
“Pulverized?” said Rollo; “what do you mean by that?”
“Why, powdered,—that is, pounded up very fine.”
“How shall he pound them?” said Rollo.