But the old Squire had an inventive brain. He drove up to the mill,
selected a large, sound pine log about four feet in diameter and set old
Davy Glinds, a brother of Hughy Glinds, to excavate a tub from it with
an adze. In his younger days Davy Glinds had been a ship carpenter, and
was skilled in the use of the broadaxe and the adze. He fashioned a
good-looking tub, five feet long by two and a half wide, smooth hewn
within and without. When painted white the tub presented a very
creditable appearance.
The old Squire was so pleased with it that he had Glinds make another;
and then, discovering how cheaply pine bathtubs could be made, he hit
upon a new notion. The more he studied on a thing like that, the more
the subject unfolded in his dear old head. Why, the old Squire asked
himself, need the Saturday-night bath occupy a whole evening because the
eight or ten members of the family had to take turns in one tub, when we
could just as well have more tubs?
Before grandmother Ruth fairly realized what he was about, the old
gentleman had five of these pine tubs ranged there in the new lean-to.
He had the carpenters inclose each tub within a sealed partition of
spruce boards.
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