"Mostly between here and sunset."
"More poetic than sharp," said the Professor, clearing his throat. "May I trouble you for a drink of water?"
Milford drew water from the well near the walnut tree, and in the kitchen dipper conveyed a quart of it to the Professor, who drank with the thirst of a toper and the suck of a horse. "I am sufficiently watered," he said, bowing and returning the dipper to Milford, who threw it out upon the grass where the hired man could find it. "What a delightful way to live!" said the Professor. "You throw things about as you please, and there is no one to complain. You may leave your pipe anywhere, and probably find it again; you let hunger, instead of time, summon you to eat. I trust I do not shock you when I say that Adam enjoyed his greatest freedom before the appearance of Eve."
Milford said that he was not shocked, and the Professor thanked him. It was pleasant to meet a philosopher, a man who did not foolishly feel called upon in resentment to declare, that his mother was a woman. A shrewder man than Milford might have inferred that the Professor had been nagged by his wife through the tedium of a Sunday forenoon. Work-day annoyances fester on Sunday. In the country, when a man has, on a Sunday, killed the chickens for dinner, salted the sheep in the pasture, and returned to the house, he is in the way; everything he does is wrong; everything he leaves undone is worse. He is kept on the ducking verge of a constant dodge.
"No man has more respect for a woman than I have," said the Professor, "but I am forced to admit that she is a constant experiment. Nature herself does not as yet know what to make of her. One moment she is a joy, and the next she is searching for a man's weak spots, like a disease. I think that it was some such expression, spoken in a sententious mood, that helped to oust me from the easy chair of congenial letters." A clock struck the hour of five. The Professor seemed surprised at the swift rush of time. "Well, I must take my leave," said he, getting up and standing with his hands resting on the back of the chair. "Ah, and would you mind walking over to my home with me?"
The lingering dawn of Milford's suspicions was now streaked with gray. "I'd like to, but the hired man's gone out, and I've got to do the chores about the place."
"But perhaps I may return with you and assist you. I am an apt hand."
"No, thank you, not to-day; some other time."
A shade of disappointment fell upon him and darkened his dignity. "I am sorry," he said. "I had hoped to know you better, and we were making such fair progress. It is not often that I get along so well with a new acquaintance." He brightened suddenly, as if the reserve forces of his mind had been brought up. "Ah, would you object to my helping you with your work, and then taking a bachelor's supper with you?"
"That's all right—fits me like a glove," said Milford.