"Come up, Bright, gee;" began Tom, wiping his eye with his shirt sleeve, when he suddenly turned round again, and said, fervently,—
"There's a good many Oxford people, Squire Curtis, are praying that your wife's life and yours may be spared to us, to be a blessing to the whole town."
Tom drew his load of small stones and rubbish close to the edge of a ditch about twenty-two feet wide and two feet deep, when he stopped the oxen and threw the stones in.
The Irishmen who had dug the cellar, were working away; and the two men with the oxen had as much as they could do to fill the trench as fast as it was dug.
Jerry came forward looking so clean and neat Bertie scarcely knew him.
"I've brought my donkey," he said; "but if you don't mind I should like to ask papa about the trench before we go to ride."
Jerry looked quite satisfied but did not dare to speak. So his father answered for him,—
"He's in no hurry, I'm sure, Master Bertie. But he's too shamefaced to talk much before strangers. If he takes you to see his tame squirrels, or the mice he's taught to eat out of his hand, his tongue will move fast enough, I reckon."
"I don't see, papa," said Bertie, "what is the use of digging out the earth and filling it right up again."