I lay at full length on a shaded piazza and pretended to read my excellent farm paper. The midsummer heat made this form of agriculture the only agreeable one.
“What,” asked my eldest, “is a bovine ruminant in three letters?”
“A bovine ruminant,” I responded, “is what the editor of this journal calls a cow. The young gentlemen who edit a certain literary weekly with which I was once familiar would call a cow a bovine ruminant. That is why I no longer take in the literary weekly and continue to read the farm journal.”
“Thanks,” she said, “It fits nicely.”
“You are fortunate to find anything that fits in this crazy world,” I answered, and leaped to my feet.
I was in bad humor. Things were at sixes and sevens, and besides, I had lost my pipe. This was not an unusual event, in fact, it is lost about half the time. But for this happy circumstance I know I should smoke too much.
I have an efficient friend, whose wife keeps her kitchen spoons arranged on revolving wooden cones, who suggested once that a simple solution of my difficulty would be to have two pipes. That is exactly what an efficient man would suggest, never stopping to consider the inconvenience of having to hunt for two lost pipes. One is bad enough.
I slouched into the garden and sat down on a bench. It had been exposed to the sun for some hours and was hot. I succeeded, however, in locating my pipe in an entirely improper and unorthodox pocket. I was rather sorry I found it, for my tobacco was moist and would not burn properly.
It soon became obvious that I could not remain where I was. I rose and started on an aimless round of my small estate. Never had it looked worse; never was there plainer evidence of a hundred sins of omission and commission. I bit my pipestem savagely as I passed the lilacs. Cerberus lay in a cool hollow in the shade. He glanced up at me and decided to remain where he was. That hurt me, but I would not call him, and I went on alone. The paddock was empty. That was good—no place for a horse in the boiling sun. I looked into the stable. Everything was wrong, too many stall windows closed; but I won’t open them. On through the gate—open, of course, in the face of definite orders to keep it closed. I won’t close it, but I will see about that later. I looked into the henhouse; nothing but drooping birds in utter dejection, save Mrs. Cuttle, who was rolling in drunken ecstasy in a dust hole in the yard.
I decided it was cooler in the house. Perhaps if I laid some tobacco on a newspaper in the sun for a time things would be better. I determined to try it.