"I mean, I didn't mean them to be cut. It was that fool hobo I gave work to last week. I told him to cut the brush in the lane. Idiot! I thought he knew a blackberry bush!"
"With the fruit on it, too," I added, relenting toward Jonathan a little. Then I stiffened again. "How about the huckleberry patch? Was that a mistake, too?"
Jonathan looked guilty, but held himself as a man should.
"Why, no," he said; "that is, Hiram thought we needed more ground to plough up next year, and that's as good a piece as there is—no big rocks or trees, you know. And we must have crops, you know."
"Bless the rocks!" I burst out. "I wish there were more of them! If it weren't for the rocks the farm would be all crops!"
Jonathan laughed, then we both laughed.
"You talk as though that would be a misfortune," he said.
"It would be simply unendurable," I replied.
"Jonathan," I added, "I am afraid you have not a proper subordination of values. I have heard of one farmer—just one—who had."
"What is it?—and who was he?" said Jonathan, submissively.