CHAPTER XIV.

BEN CONFIDES IN UNCLE ISAAC AND IS COMFORTED.

The party on the island sat by the camp fire, listening to the voices of their departing friends, till they died away in the distance.

“Who are you going to get to build your chimney, Ben?” asked Uncle Isaac.

“Joe Dorset.”

“I never’d get him; a poor man can’t afford to hire him; he came from Newburyport, and he’d be always heaving out, and telling how much better they have things in Massachusetts; growling about the stuff he has to work with, and can’t do anything without merchantable brick.”

“I don’t know anything about him,” said Ben, “only I’ve heard he is an excellent workman.”

“Well, so he is; but when you’ve said that you’ve said everything. He’ll have a great many long stories to tell, that’ll eat up his own time, and hinder other people. I like to hear a good story myself, and tell one too; but I always do it after work, and not to hinder work, in my own time, and not my employer’s; besides, he’s so lazy! He went fishing one year with John Strout, and he was so long hauling up a codfish that a dogfish eat him all up, and left nothing but the bare hooks to come to the top of the water.”

“Who shall I get?”

“Get Sam Elwell.”

“He ain’t a mason.”

“No, but he’s a plaguy sight better for your purpose; he’s a natural stone layer--took it up of his own head; he’d build you a chimney out of the stones, right here on the island, that’ll carry the smoke first rate, and that’s all you want of a chimney; and he’ll do it in quarter of the time. Then the chimney’ll compare with the house, and they’ll be all of a muchness.”

At this period of the conversation Joe flung himself upon the brush, and was soon sleeping soundly.

“Uncle Isaac, now that we are alone, I want to tell you how I feel. It does seem to me that it’s bad enough to bring Sally into a log house at all, and that I ought, in reason, to have had panel doors in it; more than two windows in the whole in a broadside, with a good brick chimney and oven laid in lime mortar.”

“Plank doors, tongued and cleated, are the warmest. Panel doors in a log house would look like a man with a beaver hat on and barefoot. You can cut out a window whenever you like, and the less holes the warmer.”

“But the chimney,” persisted Ben; “what will she say to that? and how can she get along without an oven?”

“Sally is one that looks into the realities of things; and if she has made up her mind to live on this island, depend upon it she has considered the matter all round, is looking forward to something better, and that will keep her from being discouraged, however severe things may appear at first. I don’t suppose as how an _oven_ can be made of stone; but I’ll tell you what I will do--take up the bricks in my butt’y floor, and lend ’em to you; it’s altogether too late for you to get bricks this fall.”

“Well, I hope ’twill all turn out well; but I know in my soul that she’s no more idea of what living in a log house is, than she has of London.”

“I know a great deal more about Sally Hadlock than you do, though you are engaged to be married to her, because I know her people, and there’s a great deal in the blood. She is the living picture of her grandmother Hannah, my wife was named for, who came down here when it was a howling wilderness, fought hunger and the Injuns, and beat ’em both. Handsome as she is, and gentle and good as she seems and is, she’s got the old iron natur of that breed of folks, who had much rather earn a thing than have it gin to ’em. She’s had nothing to call out that grit yet; but you’ll find out what she’s made of when she comes to be put to’t.”

“There’s one thing that troubles me, that perhaps you haven’t thought of. If I was going to take her into a new settlement, where everybody lived in log houses, and all fared alike, it would be another thing; but I am going to bring her where she can look right across the bay, and see the smoke of her mother’s chimney, and all her friends and folks living in nice frame houses. Now, if she’s unhappy, and keeps it to herself on my account, and grief is gnawing at her heartstrings, I can’t bear that.”

“Benjamin,” said Uncle Isaac, solemnly, who saw his friend was really distressed, “what I’m going to say to you now I say candidly, and what I know to be a fact. I’m a married man, Ben, and know what a woman is. When a woman really sets her heart on a man, he is almost like God Almighty to her; and the more she can put herself out for him, the more contented she is; that is, if she’s morally sartin he loves her. Now, Sally loves you with her whole soul, for she might have had her pick of half the young men in town, and she knows it. She is also sure that you love her, or you would never have given up the business prospects that you had, and undergo all that you must undergo on this island just on her account; therefore the more hardships she’s called to suffer ’long with you, the lighter hearted she’ll be; yes, she’ll take pride in’t. O, Benjamin, these rich folks, who never know what it is to strive and contrive to get along, don’t taste the real honey of married life; they don’t know what’s in one another, and don’t love one another as those do who have to fight for a living. Why, they can’t; they haven’t had to lean on each other, and be so necessary to each other.”

“Well, I never thought of that before.”

“Of course, you haven’t; I expect you’ll have the happiness of finding that out. I tell you, Hannah and I take lots of comfort Sabbath nights, when we ain’t tired, talking over all we’ve been through together. And then sometimes I get the Bible, and read them are varses, where it says, ‘She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands; she will do him good, and not evil, all the days of her life.’ I can’t help giving her a kiss, and saying, ‘Well, wife, I never should’ve got through it if’t hadn’t been for you.’”

This last sally of the noble old philosopher of the woods completely silenced Ben, who promised he’d never harbor another doubt in respect to the matter.

“There’s another thing, Benjamin; don’t try to slick it over any, but make it full as bad as ’tis. If she expects the worst, and then finds it a great deal better’n she expected, ’twill make her more contented. There’s a great deal in the first feeling and the first look of a thing, especially to a woman.”

The next day Ben and Joe were employed in hauling stone for the chimney, and making clay mortar. Uncle Isaac cut a red oak, and hewed out a mantel-bar, to form the top of the fireplace; it was twelve feet in length, and no less than nine inches square, as it was to support a great weight of stone. Though of wood, it was so far from the fire, on account of the great height and depth of the fireplace, that it could not well burn; besides, it was always the custom, whenever they had a great fire, to wet the mantel-bar the last thing before going to bed.

He then cut a hole through the floor, in what was to be the front entry, to pour potatoes through into the cellar (because the cellar was under the south part of the house), and made a door to cover it.

The house would seem to my readers but a poor place to live in. There were but four windows below, and these being put on the corners, to admit of making others between them when they should be able, gave to the house a funny look. The house consisted of but two rooms below, separated by a rough board partition, in which were two doors of rough boards, hung by wooden hinges. The chamber was reached by a ladder; the boards of the floors were rough, and full of splinters, just as they came from the saw. Against the wall in the north-west corner, with shelves and closets nicely planed, were some dressers to hold dishes. In the cellar was a square arch of stone, into which Uncle Isaac put shelves, and to which he made doors. He then made a cross-legged table, all in one leaf, and a settle to place before the fire, with a back higher than the top of a person’s head, to keep off the draughts of air that went up the great chimney.

They went off Saturday, well satisfied with what they had accomplished.