Mr. Davy had been thinking of the fishing-pond for some time, and had matured the plan in his mind before speaking of it to the boys. The morning after the conversation of which I have told you, I saw the five boys standing in thoughtful silence upon the bank above the hollow in the pasture. I do not believe the engineer who is planning the bridge across the British Channel, to connect England and France, feels anymore responsibility than did the Davy boys that morning.
"May we begin to-day, father?" said they, eagerly, at breakfast-time.
"Yes; and Patrick can help you," was the reply.
The horses were harnessed to the plough, and driven to the hollow. Patrick was instructed how to proceed. He put the reins round his neck, and took firm hold of the handles. "Go on wid ye, now!" he cried to the horses. A furrow was soon turned, and the fish-pond fairly begun.
"Your work," said Mr. Davy to the boys, "will be to wheel away the earth which Patrick ploughs out. The first thing is to lay a plank for your wheelbarrows to run upon."
Tommy and George soon brought the planks from the tool-house. Blocks were laid the proper distance apart to sustain them, and, after two or three hours' work, a line of plank, which looked to the boys as grand as the new Pacific Railway, stretched across the hollow. The little laborers went in to dinner flushed with excitement and hard work, but as happy, I dare say, as if they had been to Barnum's Museum, and seen the wax figures and wild animals.
Patrick had, during the forenoon, ploughed a good many furrows, and now the boys were busy enough carrying away the earth. Each had a wheelbarrow of his own--Clarence's a toy, which, with a tiny spade, his father had brought from the city with a view to the work now in progress. It required a steady hand to keep the wheelbarrows upon the plank. They _would_ run off once in a while, and then all hands halted, and lifted them upon the track again. The earth was to be deposited--"dumped," the boys said--upon the site of the new embankment. As the first loads were overturned, Mr. Davy made his appearance.
"This fish-pond must have an outlet, you know," said he, "at the point where the bottom is lowest. I will measure it off for you, and drive three stakes on either side. Here we will have a gate; for our pond will need emptying and cleaning occasionally. Fish will not live in impure water."