This
he brought in about nightfall, and made up a roaring fire, in order
to boil in down into sugar. Hour after hour passed away, and the
sugar-maker looked as hot and black as the stoker in a steam-boat.
Many times I peeped into the large pot, but the sap never seemed to
diminish.
"This is a tedious piece of business," thought I, but seeing the lad
so anxious, I said nothing. About twelve o'clock he asked me, very
mysteriously, for a piece of pork to hang over the sugar.
"Pork!" said I, looking into the pot, which was half full of a very
black-looking liquid; "what do you want with pork?"
"Shure an' 'tis to keep the sugar from burning."
"But, John, I see no sugar!"
"Och, but 'tis all sugar, only 'tis molasses jist now. See how it
sticks to the ladle. Aha! But Miss Katie will have the fine lumps of
sugar when she awakes in the morning."
I grew so tired and sleepy that I left John to finish his job, went
to bed, and soon forgot all about the maple sugar. At breakfast I
observed a small plate upon the table, placed in a very conspicuous
manner on the tea-tray, the bottom covered with a hard, black
substance, which very much resembled pitch. "What is that
dirty-looking stuff, John?"
"Shure an 'tis the maple sugar."
"Can people eat that?"
"By dad, an' they can; only thry it, ma'arm."
"Why, 'tis so hard, I cannot cut it."
With some difficulty, and not without cutting his finger, John broke
a piece off, and stuffed it into the baby's mouth. The poor child
made a horrible face, and rejected it as if it had been poison. For
my own part, I never tasted anything more nauseous. It tasted like a
compound of pork grease and tobacco juice. "Well, Monaghan, if this
be maple sugar, I never wish to taste any again."
"Och, bad luck to it!" said the lad, flinging it away, plate and
all. "It would have been first-rate but for the dirthy pot, and the
blackguard cinders, and its burning to the bottom of the pot. That
owld hag, Mrs. R - -, bewitched it with her evil eye."
"She is not so clever as you think, John," said I, laughing. "You
have forgotten how to make the sugar since you left D - -; but let us
forget the maple sugar, and think of something else. Had you not
better get old Mrs. R - - to mend that jacket for you; it is too
ragged."
"Ay, dad! an it's mysel' is the illigant tailor. Wasn't I brought up
to the thrade in the Foundling Hospital?"
"And why did you quit it?"
"Because it's a low, mane thrade for a jintleman's son."
"But, John, who told you that you were a gentleman's son?"
"Och!
