“This ain’t nothin’ at all to what you’d see if you went up Harlem way,” Bob replied. “Why, there the tracks are higher from the ground than the top of that steeple, an’ it looks like as if the cars would tumble right off when she swings ’round a curve.”
“Ain’t we goin’ there?” Josiah asked.
“I don’t reckon it would pay. You know we wanter put in all the time we can in the park; but we’ll see how things turn out after we’re ready to go home.”
Josiah was really sorry when Tom whispered that they were to leave the cars at the next station; for it seemed to him that he would be satisfied to do nothing else all day but “ride in the air,” as it appeared they were now doing.
On descending to the street once more, Bob began the pleasuring by purchasing a pint of peanuts; and, contentedly munching them, the three entered the park.
Here, to the disappointment of his hosts, Master Shindle evinced neither surprise nor delight at what he saw.
“Don’t you think it’s great, up here?” Bob asked, after they had walked a long distance in almost perfect silence, save for the crunching of nut-shells as they extracted the meat.
“Yes, oh yes,” Josiah replied. “It’s good enough for a field, I s’pose; but it seems to me they’d make more money to put it in crops, than lay all this land down to grass, an’ I notice they don’t pick the rocks out. Now, if there was as big a ledge in our mowin’ field as that, father’d have had it blasted in less’n no time.”
“But they don’t run a farm here, you know. This is only for the folks to look at,” Bob explained.
“And do people travel out here jest to see a mowin’ field?”