"I 'low," says he between his teeth to Skipper Tom, "that she'll scare the wits out o' you, father."
Skipper Tom laughed.
"She'll have trouble," he scoffed, "when the sea herself has failed."
"You jus' wait easy," Terry grimly promised him, "till I gets her off the stocks."
At first Terry Lute tentatively sketched. Bits of the whole were accomplished,—flecks of foam and the lines of a current,—and torn up. This was laborious. Here was toil, indeed, and Terry Lute bitterly complained of it. 'Twas bother; 'twas labor; there wasn't no sense to it. Terry Lute's temper went overboard. He sighed and shifted, pouted and whimpered while he worked; but he kept on, with courage equal to his impulse, toiling every evening of that summer until his impatient mother shooed him off to more laborious toil upon the task in his nightmares. The whole arrangement was not attempted for the first time until midsummer. It proceeded, it halted, it vanished. Seventeen efforts were destroyed, ruthlessly thrust into the kitchen stove with no other comment than a sigh, a sniff of disgust, and a shuddering little whimper.
It was a windy night in the early fall of the year, blowing high and wet, when Terry Lute dropped his crayon with the air of not wanting to take it up again.
He sighed, he yawned.
"I got her done," says he, "confound her!" He yawned again.
"Too much labor, lad," Skipper Tom complained.
"Pshaw!" says Terry, indignantly. "I didn't labor on her."