"But Durance Vile," I said. "We need that. Where shall we put the setters?"
"No, we don't. That isn't the way to treat setters, anyway. They should be cooped and fed on meat."
"I suppose you read that in one of those agricultural experiment station pamphlets," I said.
Many things that I consider disasters on the farm can be traced to one or another of these little pamphlets, and when a new one arrives I regard it with resignation but without cordiality.
The sheds went, and I missed them. Possibly the hens missed them too. They wandered thoughtfully about the barnyard, stepping rather higher than usual, cocking their heads and regarding me with their red-rimmed eyes as if they were cluckfully conjuring up old associations. Did they remember Durance Vile? Perhaps, but probably not. For all their philosophic airs and their attitudinizing, I know nobody who thinks less than a hen, or, at all events, their thinking is contemplative rather than practical.
Jonathan also surveyed the raw spot. But Jonathan's mind is practical rather than contemplative.
"Just the place for a carriage-house," he remarked.
And the carriage-house was perpetrated. Perhaps a hundred years from now it will have been assimilated, but at present it stands out absolutely undigested in all its uncompromising newness of line and color. Its ridgepole, its roof edges, its corners, look as if they had been drawn with a ruler, where those of the old barn were sketched freehand. The barn and the sheds had settled into the landscape, the carriage-house cut into it.
Even Jonathan saw it. "We'll paint it the old-fashioned red to make it more in keeping," he said apologetically.
But old-fashioned red is apparently not to be had in new-fashioned cans. And the farm remained implacable: it refused to digest the carriage-house. I felt rather proud of the farm for being so firm.