"There's that house-raising to-morrow, Nettie," said Mrs. Mathieson; "it's been on my mind this fortnight past, and it kills me."
"Why, mother?"
"I know how it will be," said Mrs. Mathieson: "they'll have a grand set-to after they get it up, and your father'll be in the first of it; and I somehow feel as if it would be the finishing of him. I wish almost he'd get ill—or anything to keep him away. They make such a time after a house-raising."
"Oh, mother, don't wish that," said Nettie; but she began to think how it would be possible to withdraw her father from the frolic with which the day's business would be ended. Mr. Mathieson was a carpenter, and a fine workman, and always had plenty of work, and was much looked up to among his fellows.
Nettie began to think whether she could make any effort to keep her father from the dangers into which he was so fond of plunging. Hitherto she had done nothing but pray for him: could she do anything more, with any chance of good coming of it? She thought and thought, and resolved that she must try. It did not look hopeful; there was little she could urge to lure Mr. Mathieson from his drinking companions; nothing except her own timid affection and the one other thing it was possible to offer him—a good supper. How to get that was not so easy; but she consulted with her mother.
Mrs. Mathieson said she used in her younger days to know how to make waffles[2], and Mr. Mathieson used to think they were the best things that ever were made: now, if Mrs. Moss, a neighbour, would lend her waffle-iron, and she could get a few eggs, she believed she could manage it still.
"But we haven't the eggs, child," she said; "and I don't believe any power under heaven can get him to come away from that raising frolic."
Nor did Nettie. It was to no power under heaven that she trusted. But she must use her means. She easily got the iron from Mrs. Moss. Then she borrowed the eggs from Madame Auguste, who in Lent-time always had them; then she watched with grave eyes, and many a heart-prayer the while, the mixing and making of the waffles.
"How do you manage the iron, mother?"
"Why, it is made hot," said Mrs. Mathieson, "very hot, and buttered; and then, when the batter is light, you pour it in and clap it together, and put it in the stove."