Touch not a single bough!’”
quoted Bess.
“To-day it threatened me,
I’ve no use for it now,”
improvised Cora.
“Listen to the trilling of the merry songsters,” said Jack, with impressive sarcasm. “They toil not, neither do they spin. They mock and fleer at us sons of honest toil. They——”
“Get to work, Jack,” Cora interrupted him heartlessly. “I love to see you work. It’s so unusual. Joel will have the trunk cut through before you boys get started.”
Thus adjured, Jack and Paul started in with a right good will, each attacking the trunk at a distance of about ten feet on either side of Joel.
Both boys were strong and sturdy, and they worked the more vigorously because they were under the appraising eyes of the girls. But their work was nothing compared with Joel’s. Nowhere could there have been found a more striking illustration of the advantages of the professional over the amateur.
Joel’s work was the very poetry of motion. Back and forth his flashing ax swung tirelessly, biting with resistless force into the very heart of the tree, and in a surprisingly short time he had cut the trunk entirely through.