“Bonds, Mother. You know that perfectly well.”
“Bonds.” She considered this a moment. “Are they hard to sell? Who buys them?”
“That depends. Everybody buys them—that is . . .”
“I don’t. I suppose because whenever I had any money it went back into the farm for implements, or repairs, or seed, or stock, or improvements. That’s always the way with a farmer—even on a little truck farm like this.” She pondered again a moment. He fidgeted, yawned. “Dirk DeJong—Bond Salesman.”
“The way you say it, Mother, it sounds like a low criminal pursuit.”
“Dirk, do you know sometimes I actually think that if you had stayed here on the farm——”
“Good God, Mother! What for!”
“Oh, I don’t know. Time to dream. Time to—no, I suppose that isn’t true any more. I suppose the day is past when the genius came from the farm. Machinery has cut into his dreams. He used to sit for hours on the wagon seat, the reins slack in his hands, while the horses plodded into town. Now he whizzes by in a jitney. Patent binders, ploughs, reapers—he’s a mechanic. He hasn’t time to dream. I guess if Lincoln had lived to-day he’d have split his rails to the tune of a humming, snarling patent wood cutter, and in the evening he’d have whirled into town to get his books at the public library, and he’d have read them under the glare of the electric light bulb instead of lying flat in front of the flickering wood fire. . . . Well. . . .”
She lay back, looked up at him. “Dirk, why don’t you marry?”
“Why—there’s no one I want to marry.”