At the end of the headland where the plough turned, Peter always wanted to stop and talk about something; but James said they would have to get on with the work, and Peter walked after the plough, straining after it for three hours, and then he said: "James, let me drive the horse. I can do no more."
"You won't feel it so much when you are accustomed to it," said James.
Anything seemed to him better than a day's ploughing: even getting up at three in the morning to go to a fair.
He went to bed early, as he used to, and they talked of him over the fire, as they used to. But however much they talked, they never seemed to find what they were seeking—his vocation—until one evening an idea suddenly rose out of their talk.
"A good wife is the only thing for Peter," said Pat.
And they went on thinking.
"A husband would be better for her," said Pat Phelan, "than a convent."
"I cannot say I agree with you there. Think of all the good them nuns are doing."
"She isn't a nun yet," said Pat Phelan.
And the men smoked on a while, and they ruminated as they smoked.