Jonathan often has the air of having known since infancy the great truths about life that I have just discovered. I overlooked this, and went on, “You see, we’re right down close to [pg 079] the earth that is the ultimate basis of everything, and all the caprices of things touch us immediately and we have to make immediate adjustments to them.”
“And that knocks the bottom out of our evenings.”
“Now if we’re in the city, playing bridge, somebody else is making those adjustments for us. We’re like the princess with seventeen mattresses between her and the pea.”
“She felt it, though,” said Jonathan. “It kept her awake.”
“I know. She had a poor night. But even she would hardly have maintained that she felt it as she would have done if the mattresses hadn’t been there.”
“True,” said Jonathan.
“Farm life is the pea without the mattresses—” I went on.
“Sounds a little cheerless,” said Jonathan.
“Well—of course, it isn’t really cheerless at all. But neither is it easy. It’s full of remorseless demands for immediate adjustment.”
“That was the way the princess felt about her pea.”