"Give me a hammer then, and I'll help drive the nails," she said, coming round to where Bob was leveling up some of the forms. "All right, drive a nail in there," he said, indicating the end of a brace that leaned against the forms.
Ruth took the hammer and tapped the nail gently, succeeding in starting it, then she raised the hammer and struck hard. The hammer descended squarely on the nail, but not the nail in the brace, but the nail on her left thumb. With a cry of pain she dropped the hammer and tried hard to keep back the tears.
"You'll have—to—excuse—me, Bob, until—I go—to the house and tie this up," she said, hesitatingly, "but as soon as Aunt Bettie puts something on it, I'll be back," and as she disappeared Bob heard her choking back her sobs.
His sympathy struggled for a few moments with his humor, but the latter got the better of him, and as soon as Ruth got well out of hearing, he couldn't refrain any longer from laughing at the funny figure she cut in her new clothes and the abrupt ending to her ambition to help build the hen house.
He found that he couldn't get along very well with the forms by himself, so he decided to knock off until after dinner. He was crossing over to the barn, where he met Ruth still dressed in her overalls, her thumb tied up, coming into the barnyard with her cousin Edith.
"We thought we'd like to look over the barn until my thumb quits hurting," called Ruth.
"All right," said Bob, and he conducted them into the thrashing floor where he explained how a barn was built and where the hay was kept and how they fed the different horses and cattle from the thrashing floor. Most of the mows were now almost empty and the barn had the appearance of great size.
"I'm going to climb up into the hay mow," said Ruth, as she started for the ladder.
"Why do you want to go up there, Ruth?" asked Edith.
"Oh, I want to see what the place looks like," replied Ruth, as she nimbly climbed the ladder and stepped off into the mow.