“Oh, I see you have begun tapping,” said Mrs. Murray; “and do you do it yourself?”
“Why, yes, mother; don't you see all those trees?” cried Hughie, pointing to a number of maples that stood behind the shanty. “Ranald and Don did all those, and made the spiles, too. See!” He caught up a spile from a heap lying near the door. “Ranald made all these.”
“Why, that's fine, Ranald. How do you make them? I have never seen one made.”
“Oh, mother!” Hughie's voice was full of pity for her ignorance. He had seen his first that afternoon.
“And I have never seen the tapping of a tree. I believe I shall learn just now, if Ranald will only show me, from the very beginning.”
Her eager interest in his work won Ranald from his reserve. “There is not much to see,” he said, apologetically. “You just cut a natch in the tree, and drive in the spile, and—”
“Oh, but wait,” she cried. “That's just what I wanted to see. How do you make the spile?”
“Oh, that is easy,” said Ranald. He took up a slightly concave chisel or gouge, and slit a slim slab from off a block of cedar about a foot long.
“This is a spile,” he exclaimed. “We drive it into the tree, and the sap runs down into the trough, you see.”
“No, I don't see,” said the minister's wife. She was too thoroughgoing to do things by halves. “How do you drive this into the tree, and how do you get the sap to run down it?”