good many other children in the family, and Mrs. Baker did
her own work, like nearly every mother in the Boy's Town, Frank almost
always had some of them in charge. When he went hunting, or fishing, or
walnutting, or berrying, or in swimming, he usually had one or two younger
brothers with him; if he had only one, he thought he was having the
greatest kind of a time.

He did not mind carrying his brother on his back when he got tired,
although it was not exactly the way to steal on game, and the gun was a
heavy enough load, anyway; but if he had not got many walnuts, or any at
all--as sometimes happened--it was not a great hardship to haul his
brother home in the wagon. To be sure, when he wanted to swim out with
the other big boys it was pretty trying to have to keep an eye on his
brother, and see that he did not fall into the water from the bank where
he left him.

He was a good deal more anxious about other boys than he was about
himself, and once he came near getting drowned through his carelessness.
It was in winter, and the canal basin had been frozen over; then most of
the water was let out from under the ice, and afterwards partly let in
again. This lifted the ice-sheet, but not back to its old level, and the
ice that clung to the shores shelved steeply down to the new level. Frank
stepped on this shore ice to get a shinny-ball, and slipped down to the
edge of the ice-sheet, which he would be sure to go under into the water.
He holloed with all his might, and by good luck some people came and
reached him a stick, by which he pulled himself out.

The scare of it haunted him for long after, but not so much for himself.
Whenever he was away from home in the winter he would see one of his
younger brothers slipping down the shore ice and going under the
ice-sheet, and he would break into a cold sweat at the idea. This shows
just the worrying kind of boy Frank was; and it shows how used he was to
having care put upon him, and how he would even borrow trouble when he had
none.

It generally happens with any one who makes himself useful that other
people make him useful, too, and all the neighbors put as much trust in
Frank as his mother, and got him to do a good many things that they would
not have got other boys to do. They could not look into his face, a little
more careworn than it ought to be at his age, without putting perfect
faith in him, and trying to get something out of him. That was how he came
to do so