Phaeton procured a pot of glue, and fastened the pieces together and in place. To give the work greater strength, he carefully bored a hole through the stub and the overlapping end of the round, put in a piece of large copper wire, a trifle longer than the hole, and, holding a large hammer against one end, gently pounded on the other with a tack-hammer, till he had flattened it out into a rivet-head; then reversed the hammers, and made a head on the other end.
Finally, as he had no vise or hand-screws, he placed a strip of wood on each side of the mended round, tied a piece of strong cord in a loose hanging-loop around each end, put a stick through, and twisted them up tight,—the sticks resting against the legs of the chair, which prevented the cords from untwisting. He thus made what a surgeon would call a couple of tourniquets, to hold his work firmly together while the glue was hardening.
Ned and I had watched all these operations with intense interest.
"I tell you what 'tis," said Ned, "Fay sometimes makes mistakes when he goes sailing off in the realms of imagination with his inventive genius, like that fire-extinguisher; but when you come down to a real thing that's got to be fixed, and nobody else can fix it, he's right there every time."
Phaeton treated the other three rounds of the chair in the same manner, and then set it away for the glue to harden. When that had taken place, he took off the tourniquets, scraped and sand papered the rounds, so as to leave no unevenness at the edges of the pieces, and then varnished them.
Waiting for that varnish to dry was one of the severest trials of patience we ever endured. But it was dry at last, and of course Ned and I were proud to go with Phaeton when he carried home his work.
He left the chair in the hall, where Ned and I also remained, and went in first to speak to his aunt.
"Seems to me things are mightily changed," said Ned, in a humiliated tone, "when Fay walks in to see Aunt Mercy, and I stay outside. But I suppose it's all right."
We heard his aunt say to Phaeton:
"I'd given up looking for you. I thought you'd find you couldn't do it; but I know you tried hard, poor boy, and I'm just as much obliged to you."