"There'll be more here by-and-by," said Sally Wire. "Don't take your things off. We'll have a real good time."
Old Mr. Wire took Jerry Buntley right along with him—under his wing, as you might say. He asked him questions, too, and nobody could guess how many times Jerry made him exclaim, "You don't say!" or, "Do tell, now, is that so?"
The forest had been left standing on all that hill-side for nothing else in the world but sugar. It was not half an hour before the Wires and their visitors were crunching over the crust among the trees, or standing around the great fires that had been built and lit before they came. Every fire had a great iron kettle on it, and every kettle was bubbling for dear life, except when a dash of cold sap was ladled into it from the barrel that stood under the nearest tree.
"It's afternoon now," said Sally Wire. "I do hope the other folks'll get here before it's too dark. But then we can have a good time at the house in the evening."
"Boys," said old Mr. Wire, "if you want to help, you jest take them two auger bits and them spiles, and go and tap a fresh lot of trees over there to the east'ard. Jim and I'll go round with the buckets."
Wonderfully white and clean were all his buckets and shoulder-yokes, and his wooden troughs that caught the sap as it dripped into them from the ends of the wooden spiles he had driven into the trees he had tapped already. There was plenty of work for him and his son, and so Jerry Buntley and Phin Meadows and Rush Potts marched away to the east, while the girls hung around the kettles, and tested the syrup, in every way they knew how, to see if any of it had boiled long enough.
"We'll have plenty to sugar off with in the house this evening," said Sally Wire; "but we mustn't let any of it get burned."
Jerry took possession of an auger and a bundle of spiles, and Phin took the other auger, and Rush Potts said he'd just go along to learn how.
"Catching cold are you, Phineas?" asked Jerry, as he began to work his auger into a splendidly tall tree, and Phin and Rush both were seized with a sudden fit of coughing,
"Ugh, ugh, ugh—no—ugh—I guess not. Bore it deep, Jerry. Old man Wire is particular about that."