“I will show you,” he said, and taking with him a gouge and ax, he approached a maple still untapped. “You first make a gash like this.” So saying, with two or three blows of his ax, he made a slanting notch in the tree. “And then you make a place for the spile this way.” With the back of his ax he drove his gouge into the corner of the notch, and then fitted his spile into the incision so made.
“Ah, now I see. And you put the trough under the drip from the spile. But how do you make the troughs?”
“I did not make them,” said Ranald. “Some of them father made, and some of them belong to the Camerons. But it is easy enough. You just take a thick slab of basswood and hollow it out with the adze.”
Mrs. Murray was greatly pleased. “I'm very much obliged to you, Ranald,” she said, “and I am glad I came down to see your camp. Now, if you will ask me, I should like to see you make the sugar.” Had her request been made before the night of their famous ride, Ranald would have found some polite reason for refusal, but now he was rather surprised to find himself urging her to come to a sugaring-off at the close of the season.
“I shall be delighted to come,” cried Mrs. Murray, “and it is very good of you to ask me, and I shall bring my niece, who is coming with Mr. Murray from town to spend some weeks with me.”
Ranald's face fell, but his Highland courtesy forbade retreat. “If she would care,” he said, doubtfully.
“Oh, I am sure she would be very glad! She has never been outside of the city, and I want her to learn all she can of the country and the woods. It is positively painful to see the ignorance of these city children in regard to all living things—beasts and birds and plants. Why, many of them couldn't tell a beech from a basswood.”
“Oh, mother!” protested Hughie, aghast at such ignorance.
“Yes, indeed, it is dreadful, I assure you,” said his mother, smiling. “Why, I know a grown-up woman who didn't know till after she was married the difference between a spruce and a pine.”
“But you know them all now,” said Hughie, a little anxious for his mother's reputation.