“I help you with your work!”

There was a long, narrow table in the woodshed—­some planks laid upon two tressels; and the walls were piled with all kinds of sawn wood, deal planks, and rough timber, and a great deal of broken furniture and heaps of shavings.  The woodshed was so full of rubbish of all kinds that there was only just room enough to walk up and down the table.  Sister Mary John was making at that time a frame for cucumbers, and Evelyn watched her planing the deal boards, especially interested when she pushed the plane down the edge of the board, and a long, narrow shaving curled out of the plane, but asking no questions.

“Now, wouldn’t you like to do some work on the other side of the table, Sister?”

Evelyn did not answer, and it was not that day nor the next, but at the end of the week, that she was persuaded to take the pincers and pull the nails out of an old board.

“And when you have done that, I will show you how to plane it.”

She seemed to have very little strength—­or was it will that she lacked?  The pincers often fell from her hands, and she would stand, lost in reverie.

“Now, Sister, you have only pulled two nails out of that board in the last ten minutes; it is really very tiresome of you, and I am waiting for it.”

“Do you really mean that you are waiting for this board?  Do you want it?”

“But of course; I shouldn’t have asked you to draw the nails out of it if I didn’t,” And it was by such subterfuges that she induced Evelyn to apply herself.  “Now, you won’t think of anything until you have drawn out every nail, will you?  Promise me.”  Sister Mary John put the pincers into her hand, and when the board was free of nails, it seemed that Evelyn had begun to take an interest in the fate of the board which she had prepared.  She came round the table to watch Sister Mary John planing it, and was very sorry when the nun’s plane was gapped by a nail which had been forgotten.

“This iron will have to go to the grinders.”

“I am so sorry, Sister.  Will you forgive me?”

“Yes, I’ll forgive you; but you must try to pay attention.”

When the cucumber-frame was finished Sister Mary John was busy making some kitchen chairs, and the cutting out of the chair-backs moved Evelyn’s curiosity.

“Shall you really be able to make a chair that one can sit upon?”

“I hope so.”

“Have you ever made one before?”

“Well, no, this is my first chair, but I made several stools.”

The mystery of dovetailing was explained to Evelyn, and she learned that glue was required.

“Now you may, if you like, melt the glue for me.”

There was a stove in the adjoining shed, and Sister Mary John lighted a fire and told Evelyn that she was to keep stirring the glue.  “And be sure not to let it burn.”  But when she came back twenty minutes after, she found that Evelyn had wandered away from the stove to the farther end of the shed to watch a large spider.