"You'll find," he remarked, "that if you don't overload the spade it will balance itself. Same with the pitchfork. Let the work do itself. Look."
He let that spade swing back, and the weight on it swung forward to the barrow with almost no exertion at all.
"Let weight weigh on your side," he said, driving in the spade. "Let force force. Let gravity grav. You see what I mean."
He gave me a little nod as I watched.
"You'll find," he said again, "that you can't fight nature. You can make her work for you, though."
Turning to the wheelbarrow, he picked up the handles of it and trundled it out into the sunny farmyard. Not quite knowing what he would be at, I followed the light figure in khaki towards that mound of unspeakableness, where the grey hen clucked to her young. A board slanted up the side of it. The young man turned to speak to me as he trundled.
"The same with the barrow," Captain Holiday went on. "You don't let it stand still at the foot of that plank and then heave it up. You heave it along the level here, where it's easiest. Then it'll go halfway up by itself. Like this."
Easily he ran the barrow halfway up the plank. Then, when I thought he was going to tip it over, he let it run down again, and wheeled it back with its noisome load to the cowshed.
"D'ye see?"
"Yes. But you might have emptied it for me," I suggested, "while you'd got it there."