“O, I’m not afraid of getting blown up with any gunpowder you can make. That wasn’t the kind of danger I was thinking of.”
“Why, danger of getting the sulphur on your clothes, and smutting your face with the charcoal.”
“Why, Jonas,” replied Rollo, “if we get the sulphur on our clothes, we will brush it off again; and, as to the smutting, we won’t touch the charcoal to our faces.”
“It is very difficult,” replied Jonas, “to have any thing to do with charcoal, without getting blacked with it. You can hardly look at it without crocking your face.”
“O Jonas,” said James, “_I_ could, I know.”
“Then, besides,” continued Jonas, “you can’t brush the sulphur off your clothes. If you once get it on, some of it will stay, and your clothes will always smell of sulphur whenever you come near a fire. I don’t think that your mother would be willing that you should have any thing to do with sulphur and charcoal.”
Rollo went in to ask his mother, but he found that tea was ready, and so he and James went in and took their places at the tea-table. When the boys proposed their plan of making gunpowder, they found Rollo’s mother, as Jonas had supposed, quite averse to any such operations. However, when his father came in and heard their conversation on the subject, he said that he would take charge of the business, and then his mother would have no objection.
“Well, sir,” said Rollo, “I’m glad of that; for perhaps Jonas wouldn’t know how to make it.”
“He can prepare the materials, at any rate,” said his father. “So, after tea, you may go out and ask him to get three tea-cups, and to put about three or four tablespoonfuls of sulphur in one, and of saltpetre in another, and charcoal in another. Only the saltpetre and the charcoal must be pulverized.”
“Pulverized?” said Rollo; “what do you mean by that?”
“Why, powdered,—that is, pounded up very fine.”
“In the iron mortar,” said his mother. “Dorothy will give it to him.”
“And when they are all ready,” continued Rollo’s father, “come and tell me.”
Accordingly, immediately after tea, Rollo and James went out to give Jonas the directions about preparing the materials. Dorothy gave Jonas the mortar. She also brought out three tea-cups, and put them upon the kitchen table. Jonas picked up from the corner of the fireplace a few small coals, and put them into the mortar and then, took up the pestle.