sunday it rained until late in the afternoon, but at that time a westerly wind sprang up which rapidly dried things, and enabled us to go out for a sunset walk.
“this is a place in which to do nothing but be happy,” said cherry to ethel as we stood on top of our favorite rock and looked up the valley for miles and miles, watching belated and feathery clouds fly across it, trying to catch up with the rain clouds that had all day long swept by.
“that’s what i felt when i first came up,” said ethel, “but i’m beginning to feel so strong now that philip has sent for a lawn tennis set, and james is going to mark a court, and you and i can play against philip.”
“yes, and while we’re waiting for it to come,” said i, “we’ll have to pitch in and give our next-door neighbour a spell of work at hay-making.”
“what’s a spell of work?” asked cherry.
“why, it’s falling to, and helping your neighbour this week, and next week he falls to, and helps you.”
“oh, how delicious. and do you know how to make hay?”
“anyone can learn how in a single morning. first you cut it, then you toss it, and then you gather it. it’s as easy as lying.”
“i’m afraid i’ll never learn it,” said cherry demurely.
“i was reading somewhere,” said i, “that in germany, where they learn to be economical from the beginning, the navy is supported—or else it’s the army is supported entirely on the hay that americans would leave in the corners and the by-ways. i’ve no doubt that the emperor william commands his people in a heaven-sent message to get out their nail scissors and cut the little blades in the remote corners that nothing be lost, and as ‘mony a mickle maks a muckle,’ he pays for his army out of the hay crop that would become withered grass with us. now to-morrow, when we go over to help the windhams, you must remember to account each blade of grass as equal in value to any other blade.”
“what will mr. windham say to women working?”
“well, the idea! ethel. did any yankee farmer ever object to women working? and isn’t it better to work out-of-doors than to work indoors? i’d rather you lifted forkfuls of hay than have you lift heavy mattresses and furniture and things, and it’s better to rake hay than to sweep floors.”
“when philip gets on a topic like that, the best thing to do is to just let him talk it out,” said ethel. “don’t say a word, and he’ll burn up for lack of fuel.”
“which is a logical remark,” said i.
“but it will be too perfectly delightful to go out like boaz and glean.”
“you may possibly mean ruth,” said i.
“i do. i always mix them up. boaz seems like a woman’s name. do you think it will rain to-morrow?”
“to-morrow,” said i, with a glance at the west where the sun, a red ball, was disappearing in a cloudless sky, “will be a good hay day.”
and to-morrow was. we rose and breakfasted early and found when we looked at the thermometer that it was already 78, but there was a west wind blowing to temper the heat.
“they’re already at work, aren’t they?” said cherry as we started out, the women clad in walking skirts and shirt-waists and broad-brimmed hats, and i bare headed and outing shirted.
“my dear child, they have been at work for the last four hours.”
i had told windham what to expect, and when he saw us coming he said, “that’s right. the more the merrier. you’ll find rakes there by the fence.”
i told him that i would mow a little, as i had done it when a boy.
“good work,” said he, and let me take his own scythe while he drove a loaded wagon home.
i started in at a field that they had not intended to attack until after lunch, but windham said it would make no difference. ethel and cherry raked as if they were sweeping, and i am not sure that their money value could have been represented by any undue use of figures. i vaulted the fence and began my fell work, taking care to keep close to the edge and demolishing every last blade of grass. i also found that my method of attack spared a little mouthful of grass at each stroke, and when i had gone down the length of the field and had stuck the point of the scythe in the earth twice, and had cut the end off of a stone, and had lunged into the fence, i determined to rest a minute and try to recall the proper way in which to hold the scythe.
the way back was easier, as i was now one remove from the fence. i poised the scythe in such a manner that i reaped what i had before spared, but found, upon looking back over the path by which i had come, that i had spared a few inches in each swathe. i seemed to be unable to make a long, clean sweep. and my back felt like breaking and i was sweating in a manner unbecoming a gentleman.
that, however, did not worry me at all, as i reflected that on my father’s side i was the first gentleman that had appeared in america for nine generations—all the rest had been of the bone and sinew of the nation.
when people talk about pride of ancestry in my hearing, and their pride of ancestry is based on the fact that they have had fine blood in their veins for generations, i inflate my chest and tell them about my maternal ancestors, the durbans. not a man did a stroke of work for eight generations, and they lived in cities and looked down on country folk in a manner that was as aristocratic as could be. when my mother married my father, who had been born and bred a country boy, all the durbans held up their hands in holy horror and said that my mother would never draw a happy breath again.
yet she went on drawing one happy breath after another, until she died, and my father knew his first unhappiness when she departed.
but when i meet people who laugh at lineage and genealogy, i do not speak of the durbans at all. i say, “yes, pride of lineage is foolish. the vernons have been plain country folk ever since they came over in 1639, and not one of them was ever celebrated for anything—not even for his wickedness. they’ve just been yankee countrymen, and so, of course, pride of ancestry is a foolish thing.”
whenever you hear a man laughing at pride of ancestry, you may be sure that his ancestors were no better than my fathers were. but if he is always talking about his ancestry, depend upon it, he has something back of him as good as the durbans, and his forbears looked down on farmers.
we worked until the whistles at egerton blew for noon, and i had by that time devastated quite a patch of grass.
windham had been busy in other places all the morning, and when he came to look at what i had done he made no reference to the thrift of the germans. he looked at the regular patches of spared blades that were holding their heads high amidst the blades that had fallen so bravely, and said,
“how would you like to drive the rake this afternoon?”
i blushed and said that i believed that would be a change of work.
i did not laugh at the somewhat amateur raking of ethel and cherry. hay-making is an art, and beginners learn better by encouragement than by ridicule.
we had brought our lunch, and we picnicked under the spreading branches of an oak, and found that we were feeling “pretty good.” and we had six red arms to our credit—four of them pretty.
