They
hastened to meet us, and inquired where we had been, looking curiously
at the chest, which I allowed them to open, while I asked my wife to
excuse our `absence without leave'; and after submitting to her gentle
reprimand, I explained my plan for a sledge, which pleased her greatly,
and she already imagined it loaded with her hogshead of butter, and on
its way from Tentholm to Falconhurst.
The chest proved to be merely that of a common sailor, containing his
clothes, very much wetted by the sea water.
The boys exhibited an array of several dozen birds, and related,
during breakfast, the various incidents of failure and success which
had attended their guns. Ernest had rightly guessed the mistakes they
would make, but practise was making them perfect, and they seemed
disposed to continue their sport, when their mother, assuring them that
she could not use more birds than those already killed, asked if I did
not think some means of snaring them might be contrived, as much powder
and shot would be expended if they fired on at this rate.
Entirely agreeing with this view of the subject, I desired the lads to
lay aside their guns for the present, and the younger ones readily
applied themselves to making snares of the long threads drawn from the
leaves of the karatas in a simple way I taught them, while Fritz and
Ernest gave me substantial assistance in the manufacture of the new
sledge.
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