“I’ll come to visit you once in a while,” said Helen. “But I am going to marry a millionaire and live on candy and nuts.”
“You’ll be glad to eat some of Jo’s beans, in that case,” said Ben quite positively. He once had known what it was to eat too much candy. “And if Jo lets me live there with him and with Ann, I’ll promise to do my full share of hoeing.”
“Father will come, too,” said Ann eagerly, “even though he will be the greatest painter in America by that time. When our ranch is paying, neither father nor mother nor Mr. Bailey will need to do any more work for money.”
“That’s a very kind promise,” said Mr. Seymour. “And I shall expect to enjoy visiting you. Helen can bring some of her candy and nuts, for they will make us a pleasant change from a steady diet of beans and potatoes.”
In the evenings Ben was tracing his deer drawings on a piece of shellacked cardboard which he planned to cut into stencils, so that he could stencil some new curtains for the Boston apartment, curtains with deer leaping all along the bottom.
CHAPTER VIII A MAN WITH A LANTERN
Meanwhile Jo made a ladder exactly long enough to reach from the ground to the porthole of the captain’s cabin. He had reasoned that the band would be safer outside the ship; he was afraid, and with good reason, of being caught in a trap. But if some one were sleeping on the blankets in the captain’s stateroom Jo could look in and see who was there without disturbing the sleeper. The man could be caught unaware before he had time to hide.
Jo made his ladder by splitting a young green cedar. He selected a straight slender tree, cut it down and trimmed the branches close to the trunk. It looked like a beautiful pole with the bark still on it. Then Jo struck the ax along the grain of the log, inserting wedges in the open gashes. This split the tree evenly as he pounded the wedges in. Then he pared the two pieces smooth and nailed flat bits of boxboard across for rungs, making sure that every nail pointed down as he drove it home.