Then patting Tim on the head, the good woman went down stairs to attend to her household duties.
As soon as the sound of the closing door told that his mother had left the room, Sam rolled out of bed, much as a duck gets out of her nest, and said, triumphantly, to Tim, who was busy dressing, "Well, we got out of that scrape all right, didn't we?"
Tim looked up at him reproachfully, remembering Sam's silence when the affair looked so dark; but he contented himself with simply saying, "Yes, it's all right till we see what your father will say about it."
"Oh, he won't say anything, so long as mother don't," was the confident reply; and the conversation was broken there by Tim going down stairs to help Mrs. Simpson in repairing the damage done by Tip.
Before he had been helping her very long, he showed himself so apt at such work that she asked, "How does it happen that you are so handy at such things?"
"I don't know," replied Tim, bashfully, "'cept that Aunt Betsey always made me help her in the kitchen; an' I s'pose it comes handy for a feller to do what he must do."
By the time Sam came down stairs the kitchen presented its usual neat appearance, and he was disposed to make light of his mother's fright; but she soon changed his joy to grief by telling him to go to the spring for a pail of water.
Now if there was one thing more than another which Sam disliked to do, it was to bring water from the spring. The distance was long, and he believed it was unhealthy for him to lift as much weight as that contained in a ten-quart pail of water. As usual, he began to make a variety of excuses, chief among which was the one that the water brought the night before was as cool and fresh as any that could be found in the spring.
Tim, anxious to make himself useful in any way, offered to go; and then Sam was perfectly willing to point out the spring, and to generally superintend the job.
"Tim may go to help you," said Mrs. Simpson, "but you are not to let him do all the work."