“What a glorious morning it is!” said he, “it’s grand weather for t’ young corn.”
“Aye,” said Natty, “I passed by your forty-acre field yesterday, and your wheat looked splendid. The rows of bright fresh green looked very bonny, and the soil was as clean as a new pin.”
“Hey, hey,” said old Crabtree, for he was proud of his farming, and boasted that his management was without equal in the Riding, “I’ll warrant there isn’t much in the way of weeds, though it’s a parlous job to keep ’em under. It beats me to know why weeds should grow so much faster than corn, and so much more plentiful.”
“Why, you see, Farmer Crabtree, weeds are nat’ral. The soil is their mother, an’ you know it’s only stepmother to the corn, or you wouldn’t have to sow it; and stepmothers’ bairns don’t often thrive well. However, I’m pretty sure that you are a match for all the weeds that grow—in the fields, at any rate.”
“Hey, or anywhere else,” said the boastful farmer.
“Why, I don’t know so much about that,” said Natty. “There’s a pesky lot o’ rubbish i’ the heart, Maister Crabtree, an’ like wicks an’ couch grass there’s no getting to the bottom on em. The love of money, now, is the root of”——
But Kasper Crabtree was off like a shot, for Blithe Natty’s metaphor was coming uncomfortably close to a personal application, and his hearer knew of old that Nathan was in the habit of striking as hard with his tongue as he did with his hammer, so he rapidly beat a retreat. Natty’s face broadened into a smile as he pulled amain at the handle of his bellows, and then drawing from the fire the red-hot coulter he was shaping, he began thumping away amid a shower of fiery spray, singing, as his wont was—
Put in the ploughshare and turn up the soil;
Harrow the seed in and sing at the toil,
Hoe up the ketlocks and pull up the weeds;