"Why, much as usual, Billy," returned Richard. "But how is this! where are your four kettles, and your troughs, and your iron coolers? Do you make sugar in this slovenly way! I thought you were one of the best sugar-boilers in the county."
"I'm all that, Squire Jones," said Kirby, who Continued his occupation; "I'll turn my back to no man in the Otsego hills, for chopping and logging; for boiling down the maple sap: for tending brick-kiln; splitting out rails; making potash, and parling too; or hoeing corn. Though I keep myself, pretty much, to the first business, seeing that the axe comes most nateral to me."
"You be von Jack All-trade, Mister Beel," said Monsieur Le Quoi.
"How?" said Kirby, looking up, with a simplicity which, coupled with his gigantic frame and manly face, was a little ridiculous—"if you be for trade, Mounsher, here is some as good sugar as you'll find the season through. It's as clear from dirt as the Garman Flats is from stumps, and it has the raal maple flavour. Such stuff would sell in York for candy."
The Frenchman approached the place where Kirby had deposited his cakes of sugar, under the cover of a bark roof, and commenced the examination of the article, with the eye of one who well understood its value. Marmaduke had dismounted, and was viewing the works and the trees very closely, and not without frequent expressions of dissatisfaction, at the careless manner in which the manufacture was conducted.
"You have much experience in these things, Kirby," he said; "what is the course you pursue in making your sugar? I see that you have but two kettles."
"Two is as good as two thousand, Judge; I'm
