Janet watched him go as if the last friend on earth was about to vanish, but she would not ask him to help her dig holes for the young trees which she now planned to chop down in the woods. So Ames drove away and Janet sat down on the crate to revise her old building plan for the pen.
“Pshaw! The darlings have to be taken out of this box without delay. And chopping trees and digging holes means delay. I’ll just go on and finish this fence as I started it, and build a stronger and better pen afterward.”
So she jumped up and stuck the fallen post back in the shallow pit and tamped down more earth about it. The other posts were planted in the same manner, and then Janet began to arrange the lath and boards upon these shaky posts.
There was little difficulty in nailing the light boards to the sides of the old sty, but when she began to hammer the nails to the post, she found matters to be very different. With the first hard blow from the hammer, the post leaned. With the second blow, it wobbled suspiciously. Janet frowned and straightened it from inside the pen. Then she braced a board against its side to force it out the other way. By holding it carefully on one side while she tried to hammer the nails in on the other side, the post stood the test—but Janet did not.
She paid more attention to the hand that held the post than she did to the direction the hammer took. Her thumb was quite close to the nail she planned to drive into the wood, while her four fingers circled the post and were on the opposite side to the thumb. When the hammer came down with great force, it glanced from the wire nail and landed on her thumb nail instead.
“Ou-ouch! Whe-ooo-ah! Ooh-ooo!” howled Janet, dancing wildly and holding her thumb while she tried to ascertain how badly it was crushed. To her further annoyance she found there was not a bit of blood or other sign to have caused such severe pain. So she began sucking her thumb loudly in order to ease its jumping pain. Then she examined it again; still no visible testimony of injury.
“Wouldn’t Rachel haw-haw if she knew this! She said a hammer made lots of trouble for one. But I won’t tell a soul of the old thing!” So deciding, Janet got up and renewed her efforts at building.
The call for dinner interrupted her carpentry, hence she dropped the hammer and nails with a sigh of relief and ran for the house. As she ran, she heard the pigs squealing in the crate, but she held both hands over her ears until she was in the house where their sounds could not be heard.
“Well, Janet, how goes the barn yard work?” asked Natalie.
“Splendidly, Nat! I’ve almost got the pig pen done. And Ames brought the fowl this noon. I’ll have to finish that chicken run so I can let them out of the feed bags.”