“Well, in this choice,” interrupted Marmaduke, “are you governed by any outward signs that prove the quality of the tree?”
“Why, there's judgment in all things,” said Kirby, stirring the liquor in his kettles briskly. “There's some thing in knowing when and how to stir the pot. It's a thing that must be larnt. Rome wasn't built in a day, nor for that matter Templeton either, though it may be said to be a quick-growing place. I never put my axe into a stunty tree, or one that hasn't a good, fresh-looking bark: for trees have disorders, like creatur's; and where's the policy of taking a tree that's sickly, any more than you'd choose a foundered horse to ride post, or an over heated ox to do your logging?”
“All that is true. But what are the signs of illness? how do you distinguish a tree that is well from one that is diseased?”
“How does the doctor tell who has fever and who colds?” interrupted Richard. “By examining the skin, and feeling the pulse, to be sure.”
“Sartain,” continued Billy; “the squire ain't far out of the way. It's by the look of the thing, sure enough. Well, when the sap begins to get a free run, I hang over the kettles, and set up the bush. My first boiling I push pretty smartly, till I get the virtue of the sap; but when it begins to grow of a molasses nater, like this in the kettle, one mustn't drive the fires too hard, or you'll burn the sugar; and burny sugar is bad to the taste, let it be never so sweet. So you ladle out from one kettle into the other till it gets so, when you put the stirring-stick into it, that it will draw into a thread—when it takes a kerful hand to manage it. There is a way to drain it off, after it has grained, by putting clay into the pans; bitt it isn't always practised; some doos and some doosn't. Well, mounsher, be we likely to make a trade?”
“I will give you, Mister Etel, for von pound, dix sous.”
“No, I expect cash for it; I never dicker my sugar, But, seeing that it's you, mounsher,” said Billy, with a Coaxing smile, “I'll agree to receive a gallon of rum, and cloth enough for two shirts if you'll take the molasses in the bargain. It's raal good. I wouldn't deceive you or any man and to my drinking it's about the best molasses that come out of a sugar-bush.”
“Mr. Le Quoi has offered you ten pence,” said young Edwards.
The manufacturer stared at the speaker with an air of great freedom, but made no reply.
“Oui,” said the Frenchman, “ten penny. Jevausraner cie, monsieur: ah! mon Anglois! je l'oublie toujours.”