“No question about your filling the church.”
“’Deed I’m awful sorry,” said Minerva, “Wakin’ you so early, an’ the fire not kindled.”
“Well, never mind. We’ll drink some milk and then we’ll go for a little walk, but I think that to-morrow perhaps the rehearsals needn’t begin until after breakfast. There’ll be a long morning before you and you can rehearse in the morning and take the nature study in the afternoon.”
“Yas’r,” said Minerva, a shade of reluctance in her tone which I attributed to the mention of nature study. Minerva evidently wanted life to be one grand sweet song.
All that morning snatches of melody floated over the landscape in the which landscape we were idly lolling under the trees reading, and I think that household duties were neglected, but that James was not averse to work was shown by the fact that he carried great armfuls of kindling wood into the kitchen.
When Ethel went out there just before lunch she found the west window banked up to the second sash with kindling wood.
Ethel likes to have the whole house in ship shape order, and this unsightly pile of wood in the kitchen went against the grain. There was enough there to last a week and meantime the kitchen was robbed of that much daylight.
James sat on the door-sill idly whittling a piece of kindling and Minerva, temporarily songless, was getting lunch ready.
“Oh, James,” said Ethel after a rapid survey of the situation, “I wish if you haven’t anything else to do that you would pile that kindling wood out in the woodshed.”
She told me he burst into his hearty laugh, and, rising with alacrity, he said: