Chapter 4 Blockhead

Blockhead It was getting dark, and Lila, the carpenter, took advantage of the last daylight to finish the work due the day after tomorrow in the yard.Suddenly he threw the plane in his hand and shouted: "I quit! It's so boring to make four-legged chairs and six-legged dining tables for these people all day long. I'm going to become a wooden man! And it's going to rot, the kind of wood that termites like most! If I can't make rattling birch bark pistols, rattling bamboo and paulownia waterwheels, fir ladders that stretch and shorten, if I can't make what I want to do, I'd rather have nothing Do!"

Little Parker, an apprentice who had been with Lila for more than a year, stared wide-eyed at him stepping over the logs and tools all over the floor, and ran out of the yard. The chisel in his hand fell and hit his foot. When the sky became clear, Lila ran back to her yard like a gust of wind.He pulled Parker into the dining room and said to him: "My good apprentice Little Parker, you have learned all my crafts. Now I will hand over my carpentry shop to you. Master, I will not do any carpentry work in the future. .” Rilla let go of her hand and patted Parker on the shoulder, then stepped over to the dining table against the wall.Without any effort, he snapped off the bad leg on the left side of the table and threw it to the ground. Then he lowered himself and got under the table, playing the role of a good table leg.

"I decided to start making a wooden man today." The last words of the carpenter Lila came from under the table.From then on, he really became a wooden man, neither smiling nor speaking. Little Parker stood stupidly on the table, and it took a long time before he said "Oh", and then said: "From now on, this table doesn't need to be placed against the wall anymore." Hey, hey, he moved the dining table to the middle of the room go. In fact, it is wrong for Lila to say that he is a piece of rotten wood that termites like most. In fact, he is a very good piece of wood.The other five legs of that dining table were broken one by one, and when they were replaced with new legs and broken again, the legs of the table were still in good condition, and the body was holding the table upright.

It's a pity that a table with only one good leg is not enough. Parker, a carpenter who has grown from a small Parker to a big Parker and then an old Parker, finally decided to scrap this dining table.He took off the table top and chopped it into small pieces, and then went to chop the table legs. Old Parker raised the ax and lowered it, and he picked out the best of the table legs and threw it in the corner of the yard before he went back to chopping wood. After several lively spring rains, the grass and trees in the yard, the leaves with long leaves, the flowers with flowers, and even a piece of old wood that was randomly thrown in the corner by someone, also sprouted buds.Several grandsons of the old carpenter Parker ran to see it happily every day, and quarreled over and over again over whether it was a walnut tree, a birch tree, or a paulownia tree, but they still couldn’t make a decision. a satisfactory result for all.

It was agreed by all that, when this strange tree had grown large enough, a strong branch must be cut off from its length to make some dainty wooden pistols.