"Tell, then."
"There's little to be told. That's it! That's the sting of it—so little, so much. A man must do something with his life, Japhra!"
"Ay, that must he, else life will use him, breaking him."
"Why, that's just it! That's what will happen to me! I'm a man—they think I'm not; there, that's the pith of it!" He was easier now and in the way of words that would express his feelings. He went on: "Look, Japhra, it's like this—" and told how he was growing up idler, how Aunt Maggie answered all his protestations for work for his hands to do by bidding him only wait—and he ended as he had begun: "A man must do something with his life!"
He stopped,—aware, and somehow, as he looked through the dusk at Japhra, a little ashamed, that his feelings had run his voice to a note of petulance. He stopped, but a space of silence came where he had looked for answer. Evening by now was full about the camp. Night that evening heralded pressed on her feet, and was already to be seen against the light in the windows of the van where Ima had lit the lamp. From the pool was the intermittent whirring of a warbler; somewhere a distant cuckoo called its engaging note that drowsy birds should not make bedtime yet. In the pines a song-thrush had its psalm to make; at intervals it paused and the air took a night-jar's whirr and catch and whirr again. Old Pilgrim cropped the grass.
II
Percival said: "What are you thinking of, Japhra?"
"Of life."
"What of life?"
"How hot it runs."