The Brick Moon, and Other StoriesHale, Edward Everett
Science
The Brick Moon, and Other Stories
Hale, Edward Everett
Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
To my great joy it was, and to my greater joy it
remained there unmolested all the rest of the week in
which we worked there. For my master, who never came
near us himself, increased our force for us on the third
day, so that at the end of the week, or Saturday night,
the job was nearly done, and well done, too.
On the third day I had taken the precaution to throw
out in the inside of our enclosure a sort of open fence,
on which I could put the wet boards to dry, which at
first I had placed on our side fence. I told McLoughlin,
what was true enough, that the south sun was better for
them than the sun from the west. So I ran out what I may
call a screen thirty-five feet from the church, and
parallel with it, on which I set up these boards to dry,
and to my great joy I saw that they would wholly protect
the roof of my little house from any observation from the
houses the other side of the way while the workmen were
at work, or even after they were inhabited.
There was not one of the workmen with me who had
forethought enough or care for our master's interest to
ask whose boards those were which we left there, or why
we left them there. Indeed, they knew the next Monday
that I went up with the Swede, to bring back such lumber
was we did not use, and none of them knew or cared how
much we left there.
For me, I was only eager to get to work, and that day
seemed very long to me. But that Monday afternoon I
asked my master if I might have the team again for my own
use for an hour or so, to move some stuff of mine and my
mother's, and he gave it to me readily.
I had then only to drive up-town to a friendly
lumberman's, where my own stuff was already lying waiting
for me to load up, with the assistance of the workmen
there, and to drive as quickly as I could into the church
alley. Here I looked around, and seeing a German who
looked as if he were only a day from Bremen, I made signs
to him that if he would help me I would give him a piece
of scrip which I showed him. The man had been long
enough in the country to know that the scrip was good for
lager. He took hold manfully with me, and carried my
timbers and boards into the enclosure through a gap I
made in the fence for the purpose. I gave him his money
and he went away. As he went to Minnesota the next day,
he never mentioned to anybody the business he had been
engaged in.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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