Once, twice, three—not all of three times did the saw gr-r-rate up and down through the wood, then all of a sudden the narrow board slid diagonally across the box and Natalie’s knee slid from under her. Down she came upon the box, skinning her arm from elbow to wrist upon the rough edges of the board.
Both Janet and Mrs. James came running at the cry of indignant surprise and pain from Natalie. She was twisting her neck in the attempt to ascertain how badly her forearm was disabled; but Janet reassured her thus: “Oh, it’s a mere scratch, Nat. You’d have something to wail about if you mashed your hand as I did this noon, when the hammer slipped and hit the wrong nail!”
Then Mrs. James patiently explained why the board slid. And Natalie began again while her two companions went back to erect the fence. All went well for a time, for Natalie was circumspect over the sawing. But even the greatest watchfulness will not always prevent mistakes, and so when Natalie sawed and sawed, and sawed without making any apparent progress through the narrow board, she called again for Mrs. James.
Janet followed, too, because she would not be left out of any interesting events in this carpentry work; besides, Natalie’s tone suggested that another thrilling experience was taking place.
“Why, my dear child!” laughed Mrs. James, when she saw what Natalie had been trying to saw through. “Didn’t you notice that the board was moved so close to the edge of the box that you were actually sawing through the three sides of this box as well as trying to go through the board?”
When the herculean task she had been striving to accomplish was revealed and demonstrated to Natalie, she dropped the saw and cried: “You saw wood, Jimmy! I’m going to hammer nails.”
Mrs. James laughed merrily and called after her: “But don’t hammer the wrong nail, Natalie!”
The hens had wandered away from the barn yard and were temporarily forgotten by the stock-farmer, but the pigs gave their owner no peace until the pen was thrown together in a sort of a way, and the crate carried to the enclosure. Mrs. James and Natalie helped release the cramped little creatures, and Janet stood inside the fence to take each one as it was removed from the crate.
It was a fortunate thing that they were too stiff from their close quarters in the box to be able to squirm and get away as they were lifted up out of the crate. But once they were at large in the pen they soon recovered their activities and raced about in excitement.
Mrs. James and Natalie stood watching them run and double back in their tracks and often strike against Janet’s shins with such force that she staggered in the pen; then Mrs. James said: “Better come out, Jan, and go for some mush to feed them.”