"Keep on, boys; pile it up."
They couldn't help stopping to watch him, though, while he cut out his first bricks with that saw. It went through the snow so nice and easy, and Bill Evans remarked, "Can't he handle a saw!"
He worked away, till a dozen bricks were ready, and he made them a little shorter on one side than on the other.
"What's that for?" asked Bob Sanders. But then Bob never opened his mouth without asking something; and all Fred told him was,
"So they'll fit around in a circle. The short side goes in."
"It's the way the Esquimaux do," said Rory. "He read all about it in a book last night."
"Go ahead, boys," said Fred. "It'll take just thirty of those bricks to go around. It won't take so many after that."
They pounded and shovelled, while he cut and set the bricks, and then he went all around that circle with the back of the saw, shaving it off so it sloped inward a little.
"Won't it let 'em slip off?" asked Bob.
"Guess not. Don't you see how that one sticks? It only leans in a little. You'll see. Let's pitch in. The snow's grand."