“Yes, as work. But all I mean is—it isn’t simple. Farm life has a reputation for simplicity that I begin to think is overdone. It doesn’t seem to me that my evening has been any more simple than if we had dressed for dinner and gone to the opera or played bridge. In fact, at this distance, that, compared with this, has the simplicity of a—I don’t know what!”
“I like your climaxes,” said Jonathan, and we both laughed. “There! I’m done. Now suppose we go, in our simple way, and lock up the barns and chicken-houses.”
* * * * *
And so the evenings came and went, each offering a prospect of fair and quiet things—books and firelight and moonlight and talk; [pg 078] many in retrospect full of things quite different—drains and latches and fledglings and cows and pigs. Many, but not all. For the evenings did now and then come when the pump ceased from troubling and the “critters” were at rest. Evenings when we sat under the lamp and read, when we walked and walked along moonlit roads or lay on the slopes of moon-washed meadows. It was on such an evening that we faced the vagaries of farm life and searched for a philosophy to cover them.
“I’m beginning to see that it will never be any better,” I said.
“Probably not,” said Jonathan, talking around his pipe.
“You seem contented enough about it.”
“I am.”
“I don’t know that I’m contented, but perhaps I’m resigned. I believe it’s necessary.”
“Of course it’s necessary.”