Script quote across the ribs

The foreman made me copy the words out fair for the lintel of the new chapel, so my hand has had practice this week. Thin strokes, he said, as though somebody wrote them in no particular hurry, though I have never been in less of a hurry in my life. The east wall came down in the February gale and took Tom's cart with it, and the window stone we had dressed is in pieces under the tarpaulin. I cannot put that right. I have stopped pretending I can, which is more than Father ever managed.

Yesterday I sat on the upturned bucket by the gate and read the lines over until they stopped meaning anything, the way a word does when you say it too often. Then they started meaning something else. The cracked stone is not mine to mend, but the next course of blocks is. The lime mix is mine, and so is the choice of whether I rush it in the cold or let it cure properly and lose a week. Mr Ashdown says a man can spend his whole life fretting over the weather and never lay a single brick.

So I have been laying bricks. Tom's brother has taken the cart apart for the iron, and I have offered him a shilling for the wheels, which he has not yet agreed to. Small things. I can see where they add up.

I have cut the lintel line for the carver to finish, and I put the comma in the wrong place, twice, before I got it right. Mr Ashdown let me leave the first attempt in the bottom corner where nobody will look. He said a mistake you can see is an honest one. Tell Mother the chapel will have my letters on it, if the rain holds off long enough for the mortar to take.

Your brother, William