"Can't I speak?" (sharply)

"Please yourself."

A silence. A cuckoo sang in the forest, and was answered from a tree
within the distant palisade. Felix chopped away slowly and deliberately;
he was not a good workman. Oliver watched his progress with contempt; he
could have put it into shape in half the time. Felix could draw, and
design; he could invent, but he was not a practical workman, to give
speedy and accurate effect to his ideas.

"My opinion is," said Oliver, "that that canoe will not float upright.
It's one-sided."

Felix, usually so self-controlled, could not refrain from casting his
chisel down angrily. But he picked it up again, and said nothing. This
silence had more influence upon Oliver, whose nature was very generous,
than the bitterest retort. He sat up on the sward.

"I will help launch it," he said. "We could manage it between us, if you
don't want a lot of the fellows down here."

"Thank you. I should like that best."

"And I will help you with the cart when you start."

Oliver rolled over on his back, and looked up idly at the white flecks
of cloud sailing at a great height.

"Old Mouse is a wretch not to give me a command," he said presently.