Rollo at Work

What Rollo Might Do.

So Jonas walked along to the chips, and asked Rollo to fill up that basket, and carry it, and then come back, and he would tell him.

So Rollo filled up the basket, carried it to the bin, and came back very soon. Jonas told him then to fill it up again as full as it was before.

"There," said Jonas, when it was done, "now it is as full as the other was, and I should think you have been less than two minutes in doing it. We will call it two minutes. Two minutes for each basket full would make thirty baskets full in an hour. Now, I don't think there are more than thirty baskets full in all; so that, if you work steadily, but without hurrying any, you would get them all in in an hour."

"In an hour?" said Rollo. "Could I get them all in in an hour?"

"Yes," said Jonas, "I have no doubt you can. But you must not hurry and get tired out. Work moderately, but steadily;-that is the way."

So Jonas went to the field, leaving Rollo to go on with his thirty baskets. Rollo thought it would be a fine thing to get the chips all in before his father should come home, and he went to work very busily filling his basket the third time.

"I can do it quicker," said he to himself. "I can fill the basket a great deal faster than that. I will get it all done in half an hour."

So he began to throw in the chips as fast as possible, taking up very large ones too, and tossing them in in any way. Now it happened that he did fill it this time very quick; for the basket being small, and the chips that he now selected very large, they did not pack well, but lay up in every direction, so as apparently to fill up the basket quite full, when, in fact, there were great empty spaces in it; and when he took it up to carry it, it felt very light, because it was in great part empty.

He ran along with it, forgetting Jonas's advice not to hurry, and thinking that the reason why it seemed so light was because he was so strong. When he got to the coal-bin, the chips would not come out easily. They were so large that they had got wedged between the sides of the basket, and he had hard work to get them out.

This fretted him, and cooled his ardor somewhat; he walked back rather slowly, and began again to fill his basket.