"What," inquired Mr. Carmody, "is an Alpha Separator?"
John said it was an Alpha Separator.
There was a pause. John, who appeared to have something on his mind these days, stared gloomily at the carpet. Mr. Carmody shifted in his chair.
"Very well," he said.
"And new tractors," said John. "And we could do with a few harrows."
"Why do you want harrows?"
"For harrowing."
Even Mr. Carmody, anxious though he was to find flaws in the other's reasoning, could see that this might well be so. Try harrowing without harrows, and you are handicapped from the start. But why harrow at all? That was what seemed to him superfluous and wasteful. Still, he supposed it was unavoidable. After all, John had been carefully trained at an agricultural college after leaving Oxford and presumably knew.
"Very well," he said.
"All right," said John.