“Do you talk politics?”
“No—we play cards. Why do you look at me like that?”
“You never cared for cards before.”
“No; but what the devil am I to do? I can’t read, because of these cursed eyes of mine—and the hammering in my head. . . . And I’ve counted all the farms up and down the valley now. There are fifty in all. And on the farm here there are just twenty-one houses, big and little. What the devil am I to take to next?”
Merle sighed. “It is hard,” she said. “But couldn’t you wait till the evening to play cards—till the children are in bed—then I could play with you. That would be better.”
“Thank you very much. But what about the rest of the day? Do you know what it’s like to go about from dawn to dark feeling that every minute is wasted, and wasted for nothing? No, you can’t know it. What am I to do with myself all through one of these endless, deadly days? Drink myself drunk?”
“Couldn’t you try cutting firewood for a little?”
“Firewood?” He whistled softly. “Well, that’s an idea. Ye—yes. Let’s try chopping firewood for a change.”
Thud, thud, thud!
But as he straightened his back for a breathing-space, the whirr, whirr of Raastad’s mowing machine came to him from the hill-slope near by where it was working, and he clenched his teeth as if they ached. He was driving a mowing machine of his own invention, and it was raining continually, and the grass kept sticking, sticking—and how to put it right—put it right? It was as if blows were falling on festering wounds in his head, making him dance with pain. Thud, thud, thud!—anything to drown the whirr of that machine.