"'Dear me! Shall I go home and fetch it?'
"'No, you needn't', crossly. 'By the time you got here with it you would have to go right back to get supper. It is half past one o'clock now, and I have been at work an hour.'
"'But you were going to work all day, weren't you?' He had scarcely made an impression on that tundra, and not a single nugget had we seen.
"With that he planted a few more good, hard jabs into the thicket of moss, vines and leaves, trying to get the hole four feet square anyway, after my rather uncalled for taunt about its size.
"In the meanwhile I was not wasting my time. I was using the pick upon a cluster of bunch grass hummocks, wishing to fill the gold pan with dirt from underneath that I might wash it out and see if it contained 'colors'.
"Somehow I felt more subdued like, perhaps because I was growing tired; but Pa seemed to be affected differently. I could hear him grumbling to himself, and that was a bad sign. By and by his shovel struck something hard. He uttered an oath.
"'Pa Morrison!' I exclaimed, 'Ain't you ashamed of yourself? To think of your swearing like that. It's awful! Give me that shovel instantly.'
"'I won't!'
"'Give me that shovel, I say,' for we were both church members and had been for many years, and I was inexpressibly shocked at his profanity, and wished to remove the cause.
"'Shut your head, Mary Morrison! Whose doing this mining, will you tell me?'