But the dwellers in Frosty Hollow laughed hugely.
"Them Carter boys thinks they knows everything," was the universal
comment, "but they don't know the first thing about how to run a fish
weir. Why, them there weirs 'll shet every gaspereaux aout o' the cove,
'n 'tain't much of a place fur gaspereaux, anyways!"
When such remarks were tendered to the boys they would merely reply,
"You just wait till you see how our way works. If it doesn't work
the way we expect, then maybe it'll be time enough to try your way!"
The experiment interested the village for a few weeks, and at length
died out of notice.
It was utterly eclipsed, indeed, by a topic of profounder interest.
The village learned that Mr. Hand was foreclosing his mortgage, and
that the Carters were to be sold out the ensuing spring. Some of the
people were sympathetic, but others, resenting Mrs. Carter's proud
exclusiveness, took a malicious delight in the near prospect of her
humiliation.
Roused at last to a sense of the reality of the danger, Mrs. Carter,
who was quite too busy at her buttermaking and other indoor farmwork
to spare time for her threatened visit to Barchester, wrote urgently
to the Hon. Mr. Germain. The boys posted her letter, from which they
knew nothing could come, and then went to comfort themselves with a
sight of the way the silt was piling up inside their warping dikes.
The growth of the deposit had exceeded their most sanguine expectations.
Early in August they decided that it was time to begin the permanent
dike, the "running dike," as it was called in local parlance.
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