“But I ain't foolin', Ma. Mr. Cameron is our new hand. He'll knock yeh off a few sticks in no time.” So saying, Haley walked off with his pails to the milking, leaving his wife and the new hand facing each other, each uncertain as to the next move.
“What can I do, Mrs. Haley?” enquired Cameron politely.
“Oh, I don't know,” said Mrs. Haley wearily. “I want a few sticks for the breakfast, but perhaps I can get along with chips, but chips don't give no steady fire.”
“If you would show me just what to do,” said Cameron with some hesitation, “I mean, where is the wood to be got?”
“There,” she said, in a surprised tone, pointing to a pile of long logs of ash and maple. “I don't want much.” She gathered her apron full of chips and turned away, all too obviously refusing to place her hope of wood for the breakfast fire upon the efforts of the new man. Cameron stood looking alternately at the long, hard, dry logs and at the axe which he had picked up from the bed of chips. The problem of how to produce the sticks necessary to breakfast by the application of the one to the other was one for which he could see no solution. He lifted his axe and brought it down hard upon a maple log. The result was a slight indentation upon the log and a sharp jar from the axe handle that ran up his arm unpleasantly. A series of heavy blows produced nothing more than a corresponding series of indentations in the tough maple log and of jars more or less sharp and painful shooting up his arms. The result was not encouraging, but it flashed upon him that this was his first attempt to make good at his job on the farm. He threw off his coat and went at his work with energy; but the probability of breakfast, so far as it depended upon the result of his efforts, seemed to be growing more and more remote.
“Guess ye ain't got the knack of it,” said a voice, deep, full, and mellow, behind him. “That axe ain't no good for choppin', it's a splittin' axe.”
Turning, he saw a girl of about seventeen, with little grace and less beauty, but strongly and stoutly built, and with a good-natured, if somewhat stupid and heavy face. Her hair was dun in colour, coarse in texture, and done up loosely and carelessly in two heavy braids, arranged about her head in such a manner as to permit stray wisps of hair to escape about her face and neck. She was dressed in a loose pink wrapper, all too plainly of home manufacture, gathered in at the waist, and successfully obliterating any lines that might indicate the existence of any grace of form, and sadly spotted and stained with grease and dirt. Her red stout arms ended in thick and redder hands, decked with an array of black-rimmed nails. At his first glance, sweeping her “tout ensemble,” Cameron was conscious of a feeling of repulsion, but in a moment this feeling passed and he was surprised to find himself looking into two eyes of surprising loveliness, dark blue, well shaped, and of such liquid depths as to suggest pools of water under forest trees.
“They use the saw mostly,” said the girl.
“The saw?” echoed Cameron.
“Yes,” she said. “They saw 'em through and then split 'em with the axe.”