Here you two boys may as well do something for your bread and butter." Dick said something to himself answering to nineteenth-century Bother! and awaited his father's orders.
"You can drag that root up to the yard.

Get a rope round it and haul.
Humph, no! it will be too heavy for you alone.

Leave it." "Yes, father," said Dick with a sigh of relief, for it was more pleasant to stand watching the men cutting the peat and the birds flying over, or to idle about the place, than to be dragging along a great sodden mass of pine-root.
"Stop!" cried the squire.

"I don't want the men to leave their work.
Go and fetch the ass, and harness him to it.

You three donkeys can drag it up between you." The boys laughed.
"I'm going up the river bank.