"It's to give one man who works with his hands fresher air to breathe, fewer hours' work, a better bed."
"You're an artist, Pete. Don't forget that."
"I don't. But it isn't the biggest thing."
"If you should paint a picture for that workingman to look at while he says his prayers? what then?"
"You don't understand, Osmond," said the boy. "Labor! Labor is the question of the day."
Osmond looked over at a field of seedlings where five men with bent backs were weeding and where he himself had been bending until now. He smiled a little.
"I understand work, boy," he said gently. "Only I can't make hot distinctions. The workingman is as sacred to me as you are, and you are as sacred as the workingman."
Peter was making little nosegays of grass and weeds, and laying them in methodical rows.
"I can't paint, Osmond," he said abruptly. "These things are just crowding me."
"What things?"