Father Thrift spent the next few days in making wooden pails, in which
to gather the maple sap.
What a lot of measuring and sawing and fitting and finishing it takes
to make a few pails!
Shaggy Bear helped as much as he could. But bears are _such_ clumsy
things!
Finally one day Father Thrift said to Shaggy: "Now everything is
ready. We have our spouts with which to draw the sap from the trees.
And we have the wooden pails and some earthen crocks I made from clay
last summer, in which to gather it.
"There is a large iron kettle we will use for boiling the sap down
into sirup and sugar.
"To-morrow we will tap our trees."
"Why to-morrow?" asked the bear. "That seems too long to wait. Why not
to-day?"
"Because," replied Father Thrift, "everything depends on time. There
isn't time enough left to-day. To-morrow we will start work real
early. And to get up early to-morrow we must get to bed early
to-night."
"I don't see how I shall be able to sleep at all," grumbled the bear.
But in a few moments he was fast asleep where he sat.
He was a funny fellow!
Still, Father Thrift did not mind. He liked the quiet. When it was
quiet he could think. In that he was quite different from many people,
who like only to talk.
And he thought to himself: "Suppose that each person wastes one hour a
day. A hundred days, a hundred hours. Multiply that by the number of
people in the world--"
But the figures were too large even for Father Thrift to count up.
"If every one would use that hour each day in reading a good book, or
in thinking, or in doing something else that is useful, how much
better the world would be in another hundred years!"
Father Thrift sat and thought for a whole hour.
Then he waked the bear and each went to his own bed to rest for the
night.
What a funny sight it was--a man and a bear sleeping side by side in
the same room!
Early the next morning Father Thrift and the bear went to the maple
grove to tap their trees.
Father Thrift bored holes in the tree trunks. Then he pounded a little
spout into each hole for the sap to run through.
As they had no handles on their pails and crocks, they could not hang
them on the spouts. Instead they set them down in the snow under the
spouts.
The sun was getting warm, and was drawing up the sap from the roots of
the tree into its branches. Soon you could hear it drip, drip,
dripping into the pails and the crocks.
Shaggy Bear was too astonished to talk. He put out his paw, and a
great drop of shining yellow maple sap fell on it. Then he licked his
paw. Then he grunted, a funny bear grunt of surprise and pleasure.
_Mmmmmm!_ It was good! It was sweet, truly. And what a delicious
flavor it had!
The bear put out his paw again and again. And how he did lick the sap
off it! My, oh, _my_! it was sweet! Not even the honey of the bee
tasted so good. It was like nothing else in the whole forest.
Meanwhile Father Thrift was arranging his kettle and pans and building
a fire.
"Now let us pour all the sap into one pail," he said, "and perhaps we
shall have enough to start boiling."
"Oh, but that may spoil it!" cried Shaggy Bear.
"The sap is made sweeter by boiling," said Father Thrift. But the bear
did not see how that could be.
When the sap began to boil, Father Thrift told Shaggy to stir it, so
that it would not burn.
Suddenly the bear began jumping about and crying: "Father Thrift, come
here, come here!"
Father Thrift ran over to see what had happened.
Shaggy was all excitement.
"Look!" he cried. "Look in the kettle! We had much there. Now we have
little. I told you the fire would spoil it!"
"No," replied Father Thrift, smilingly, "the fire has not spoiled
anything. When the sap boils, the water in it goes away in steam. And
the longer it boils, the more the water goes away.
"This time we will not let it boil so very long, and then we shall
have sirup. But the next kettle of sap we will boil longer and then we
shall have maple sugar."
When the sirup grew thick, Father Thrift said, "Taste!" And the bear
tasted.
"Oh, Father Thrift," he cried in delight, "it is the best thing I have
ever tasted! Truly, the boiling improves it."
Then when the maple sugar was done, Father Thrift called Shaggy.
"Taste _this_," he said.
Ah, how good it was! Nothing like it had ever gone into Shaggy Bear's
mouth before. Never had he tasted such sweetness.
And, oh, what a wonderful meal they had that night! Father Thrift made
golden corn cakes, and he and Shaggy ate the hot cakes with fresh
maple sirup poured over them.
* * * * *
The bear grew thoughtful after supper.
"Now I know why I used to get into so much trouble," he said. "I have
had too much idle time on my hands.
"After this I will work hard and learn. I--I think I could help you a
lot, Father Thrift. Will--you--let--me--stay--if--I--do?"
"I shall be glad to have you stay, always," said Father Thrift.
And the bear was so overjoyed at what Father Thrift said that he
cried.