Rollo at Work

A Contract.

So Rollo and James brushed the loose sand from their clothes, and washed their faces and hands, and went in. As tea was not quite ready, they sat down on the front-door steps before Rollo's father, who was then sitting in his arm-chair in the entry, reading.

He shut up the book, and began to talk with the boys.

"Well, boys," said he, "what have you been doing all this afternoon?"

"O," said Rollo, "we have been hard at work."

"And what have you been doing?"

Rollo explained to his father that they had been making a sand-garden out in a corner of the yard, and they both asked him to go with them and see it.

They all three accordingly went out behind the house, the children running on before.

"But, boys," said Rollo's father, as they went on, "how came your feet so muddy?"

"O," said James, "they got muddy in the quagmire."

The boys explained how they could not go around the quagmire with their loaded wheelbarrows, and so had to pick their way through it the best way they could; and thus they got their shoes muddy a little; but they said they were as careful as they could be.

When they came to the sand-garden, Rollo's father smiled to see the beds and walks, and the rows of flowers stuck up in the sand. It made quite a gay appearance. After looking at it some time, they went slowly back again, and as they were walking across the yard,

"Father," said Rollo, "do you not think that is a pretty good garden?"

"Why, yes," said his father, "pretty good."

"Don't you think we have worked pretty well?"

"Why, I think I should call that play, not work."

"Not work!" said Rollo. "Is it not work to wheel up such heavy loads of sand? You don't know how heavy they were."

"I dare say it was hard; but boys play hard, sometimes, as well as work hard."

"But I should think ours, this afternoon, was work," said Rollo.

"Work," replied his father, "is when you are engaged in doing any thing in order to produce some useful result. When you are doing any thing only for the amusement of it, without any useful result, it is play. Still, in one sense, your wheeling the sand was work. But it was not very useful work; you will admit that."

"Yes, sir," said Rollo.

"Well, boys, how should you like to do some useful work for me, with your wheelbarrows? I will hire you."

"O, we should like that very much," said James. "How much should you pay us?"

"That would depend upon how much work you do. I should pay you what the work was fairly worth; as much as I should have to pay a man, if I were to hire a man to do it."

"What should you give us to do?" said Rollo.

"I don't know. I should think of some job. How should you like to fill up the quagmire?"

"Fill up the quagmire!" said Rollo. "How could we do that?"

"You might fill it up with stones. There are a great many small stones lying around there, which you might pick up and put into your wheelbarrows, and wheel them along, and tip them over into the quagmire; and when you have filled the path all up with stones, cover them over with gravel, and it will make a good causey."

"Causey?" said Rollo.

"Yes, causey," said his father; "such a hard, dry road, built along a muddy place, is called a causey."

They had got to the tea-table by this time; and while at tea, Rollo's father explained the plan to them more fully. He said he would pay them a cent for every two loads of stones or gravel which they should wheel in to make the causey.

They were going to ask some more questions about it, but he told them he could not talk any more about it then, but that they might go and ask Jonas how they should do it, after tea.