“We might go out and see the Vegetable Man’s daughter,” suggested Gassy, flattered at being taken into consultation.
“I think that’s the only thing left,” agreed Barbara; “ask Sam to harness Maud S., and I’ll put on my hat while you’re gone. You may go with me, if you want to.”
Grassy looked wistful. “I s’pose if I stayed, I could pare the potatoes for you,” she said hesitatingly.
“You dear little chicken, you,” said Barbara. “Never mind the potatoes; we can fix them together when we come back. I’d rather have you with me, now.”
Maud S. jogged slowly along the road that led to the Vegetable Man’s. It was a winding road that twisted its way uphill like a yellow shaving curl. Midsummer lay heavy on the farm-lands stretching away on either side. The corn-fields gleamed yellow in the sunshine, the locusts filled the air with their incessant drone, and goldenrod and wild asters, covered with a veil of dust, flaunted in every corner of the rail-fences. Barbara loved those rail-fences, built in the days when time was the farmer’s chief asset, and now rapidly giving way to the ugly, prosaic barbed-wire that is so symbolic of the present age of commercialism. Something of this thought she expressed to Gassy.
“It keeps the cows out of the corn, though,” was the small sister’s response.
Barbara mused over the words as she urged on Maud S. They, too, were characteristic of this Western country, the new world that was so busy at money-making that it had no time to think of beauty; the world that lived alone to keep the cows out of the corn. She loved the long, rich stretches of rolling prairie lands; she was proud of the miles of waving yellow corn-fields; at college she had felt a tender sort of thrill every time she claimed ownership with the middle West. But planted in that same prairie land, like a stalk of corn, herself, her beauty-loving soul revolted at its materialism, and pride in its productiveness seemed a sort of vulgar greed. The beautiful middle West was peopled by men with souls so dead, that to keep the cows out of the corn was their ambition in life. Live-stock and grain bounded their existence on four sides. Was it possible that people could grow so deaf to the voice of loveliness that a midsummer day could fail to speak of beauty to them? The strident clatter of a harvesting-machine seemed to assent to the question.
At the top of the hill, Maud S. stopped for a rest. And looking down from the summit, Barbara was answered. Into the hazy, blue distance stretched the corn-fields, so far away that the tasseled tops became but an indistinct, waving sea. Eyes could not see where the sea ended and the hills began; the two met, blended, melted into each other; every sign of industry was a part of the wonderful landscape, and utilitarianism became beauty itself.
At the third curl of the shaving stood the Vegetable Man’s large red barn. Back of it, and hidden from the road, stood his small white house.
“I should think his wife would rather live in the stable,” said Gassy, as the two girls went up the narrow walk with the grass growing untidily through the broken planks.