“It is, Dick. Now, what are you going to do toward putting up the tent?”
“Everything, my boy, everything. I know more about putting up tents than you do about science, or whatever you teach. Now, Hiram, my boy, you cut me some stakes about two feet long—stout ones. Here, professor, throw off that coat and négligé manner, and grasp this spade. I want some trenches dug.”
Yates certainly made good his words. He understood the putting up of tents, his experience in the army being not yet remote. Young Hiram gazed with growing admiration at Yates’ deftness and evident knowledge of what he was about, while his contempt for the professor’s futile struggle with a spade entangled in tree roots was hardly repressed.
“Better give me that spade,” he said at length; but there was an element of stubbornness in Renmark’s character. He struggled on.
At last the work was completed, stakes driven, ropes tightened, trenches dug.
Yates danced, and gave the war whoop of the country.
“Thus the canvas tent has risen,
All the slanting stakes are driven,
Stakes of oak and stakes of beechwood:
Mops his brow, the tired professor;
Grins with satisfaction, Hiram;
Dances wildly, the reporter—
Calls aloud for gin and water.
Longfellow, old man, Longfellow. Bet you a dollar on it!” And the frivolous Yates poked the professor in the ribs.
“Richard,” said the latter, “I can stand only a certain amount of this sort of thing. I don’t wish to call any man a fool, but you act remarkably like one.”
“Don’t be mealy-mouthed, Renny; call a spade a spade. By George! young Hiram has gone off and forgotten his—And the ax, too! Perhaps they’re left for us. He’s a good fellow, is young Hiram. A fool? Of course I’m a fool. That’s what I came for, and that’s what I’m going to be for the next two weeks. ‘A fool—a fool, I met a fool i’ the forest’—just the spot for him. Who could be wise here after years of brick and mortar?