“I mark ye Hours but cannot stay their Race;
Nor Priest nor King may buy a moment’s Grace;
Prepare to meet thy Maker face to face.”
Sunlight poured into the white kitchen through the south window, setting everything a-shine and a-twinkle—a contrast to unkempt Bosula, redolent of cooking and stale food, buzzing with flies, incessantly invaded by pigs and poultry. Outside Roswarva all was in the same good shape; the erst-littered yard cleared up, the tumbledown sheds rebuilt and thatched. Eli limped home over trim hedges, fields cultivated up to the last inch and plentifully manured and came upon his own land—crumbling banks broken down by cattle and grown to three times their proper breadth with thorn and brambles; fields thick with weeds; windfalls lying where they had dropped; bracken encroaching from every point.
He had never before remarked anything amiss with Bosula, but, coming straight from Roswarva, the contrast struck him in the face. He thought about it for two days, and then marched over to Roswarva. He found Simeon Penaluna on the cliff-side rooting out slabs of granite with a crowbar and piling them into a wall. A vain pursuit, Eli thought, clearing a cliff only fit for donkeys and goats.
“What are you doing that for?” he asked.
“Potatoes,” said Simeon.
“Why here, when you got proper fields?”
“Open to sun all day, and sea’ll keep ’em warm at night. No frost. I’ll get taties here two weeks earlier than up-along.”
“How do you know?”