"I declare," said his sister Grace, "it almost seems like killing a real person."
"Well," said her mother, thoughtfully, "you can't expect to find much sentiment in a grasping, narrow-minded man like Mr. Hardaker. There isn't any use in saying much about it, but it is too bad to do it--on his birthday, too. I'm really ashamed to be so 'worked up,' but it seems as if a tree like that might be allowed to stand till it died a natural death."
"The bolt that strikes the towering cedar dead Glides harmless o'er the hazel's lowly head.'"
"Cedars and hazels alike fall before Farmer Hardaker's rapacious axe," said her mother, smiling. "I fancy that he doesn't skip anything, judging from the looks of the poor, shorn mountain-side. It's too bad!"
But, day by day, Farmer Hardaker's ox-sleds, unheeding the expostulations of the entire population, climbed the steep, and came back loaded with the carcasses of "George Washington's" sturdy neighbors. He was getting very near to "George" himself.
"I say, boys," said George Farnsworth to his school-mates, as they were sliding at recess, a few days after he had overheard the conversation between his mother and sister--"I say, ain't it pretty mean of old Hardaker to cut down 'George Washington'?"
"It is that," said several of the boys, heartily, and they turned and looked up to the stately tree, which stood in silent grandeur, as ever since they could remember, and appealed speechlessly to them all.
"He says," continued George, "that he is going to celebrate Washington's birthday by cutting it down with his little hatchet."
The other boys laughed, but George kept sober.
"It's rather funny," he said, slowly; "but can't we manage to save it some way?"
The general opinion seemed to be--borrowed from their friends at home, probably--that it couldn't be done, until at last Tom Dermot said, speculatively,
"Maybe he would," said George, brightening up. "You know my name's George Washington, boys, and I'm bound to save the dear old gentleman if I can."
"I don't see why he couldn't sell it standing as well as cut up," continued Tom--"only, if he would, it wouldn't do us any good. We haven't got any money."
"Maybe we could raise some," said George, bravely. "Wonder how he'd sell it?"