So Neale bought a suit of overalls at the general store and began to work. For the first three days he wished with all his heart he'd kept his mouth shut. Handling green beech for ten hours a day was very different from helping out a half-hour at a time. Besides, his muscles and above all his hands were pitifully soft after an indoor winter and his fortnight of vegetating. It didn't seem worth while to make an ox of himself for five cents an hour and board--the wage of unskilled labor in that non-unionized Arcadia--but he was ashamed to quit on a job that was always handled by boys of his age. Nobody had asked him to do it. He had offered himself, pushed himself in. It would be too worthless to back out. But, oh gee! he was tired when he got through at six o'clock, and clumped heavily up the hill after Grandfather and Si, walking, it seemed to him, with as stiff and aged a gait as theirs. He shovelled supper up, starved, starved to his toes, and staggered to bed immediately afterward. The first week he lost five pounds. Thereafter he gained steadily, and all solid muscle. After a time he mastered the mill-hand's basic axiom, "Never lift a plank if you can slide it," his hands stopped blistering and hardened, and he grew muscles in various places up and down his back, where he had never had any before, so that the boards became singularly lighter in his hands. And then, just when he had mastered his job, the water-god took a hand in the game. Since the spring rains, there had been nothing but the gentlest showers. The mill-pond had shrunk to a pool, and grass began to show far down its dried-up sides. The water no longer ran over the mill-dam. One day about five o'clock the mill stopped, with a log half-sawed. "No water," said Silas, "got to shut down till the pond fills up." They sat down instantly, hanging their empty hands over their knees, in an ecstasy of idleness. They managed to finish that log by supper time, but the drought held. Soon they could saw only by pondfuls. A couple of hours in the early morning, a scant hour after lunch, and somewhat less after supper, in the twilight. Between times Si patched belts, or hoed corn, or sat and smoked, Grandfather pottered around the garden, or sat and smoked as he waited for the pond to fill. This was delightful--just enough work for exercise, and lots of blameless leisure. But with so many hours to read, Neale ran through at an alarming rate the books he had brought with him. Even "Vanity Fair" didn't hold out forever, and with Dobbin and Amelia finally united, Neale was at the end of his literary resources. Boredom settled down heavily. Si's reiterated anecdotes lost all savor; he had read all the books on the sitting-room book-shelves, or had given them up as hopeless. He felt bound by his contract to be on hand whenever the mill could be run, so that long walks were out of the question.