“Suppose it doesn’t work,” I suggested.
“Suppose it does,” said Jonathan.
He began to pump furiously. “Pour in water there!” he directed. “Keep on pouring—don’t stop—never mind if she does spout.” I poured and he pumped, and there were the usual sounds of a pump resuming activity: gurglings and spittings, suckings and sudden spoutings; but at last it seemed to get its breath—a few more long strokes of the handle, and the water poured.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Oh, fairly late—about ten—ten minutes past.”
Instead of our walk, we stood for a moment under the big maples before the house and looked out into a sea of moonlight. It silvered the sides of the old gray barns and washed over the blossoming apple trees beyond the house. Is there anything more sweetly still than the stillness of moonlight over apple blossoms! As we went out to the barns to lock up, even the little hencoops looked poetic. Passing one of them, we half roused the feathered family within and heard muffled peepings and a smothered clk-clk. Jonathan was by this time so serene that I felt I could ask him a question that had occurred to me.
“Jonathan, how long is three shakes of a lamb’s tail?”
“Apparently, my dear, it is the whole evening,” he answered unruffled.
The next night was drizzly. Well, we would have books instead of a walk. We lighted a fire, May though it was, and settled down before it. “What shall we read?” I asked, feeling very cozy.
Jonathan was filling his pipe with a leisurely deliberation good to look upon. With the match in his hand he paused—“Oh, I meant to tell you—those young turkeys of yours—they were still out when I came through the yard. I wonder if they went in all right.”