"No, you old muff, that is Dakota. Quite another pair of shoes. I don't want to disturb the Governor, or I could find out in a moment. Never mind, it doesn't matter; and here we go to work again. Now what is the sweetest smell, do you think, in all the world of farming? Not a great over-powering scent, but a delicate freshness through the air."
"I should say the hay on an upland meadow, when it begins to make. Or perhaps a field of new bean-blossom. I never knew that till this year; but upon my word it was stunning."
"No, the most delicate of all scents is from the clover first laid bare among the wheat where it was sown. No blossom of course; but the fragrance of the leaf, among the glossy quills that sheltered it. But come along; if you can't swing hook without peril of manslaughter, you can bind, or you can set up stooks, or earn your keep some little. Why, Grace is worth a score of you! Poor Tom, is your finger bleeding? You must come harvesting in kid gloves."
"I will tell you what it is," said Tom, after keeping his place among the binders for about five minutes. "I am a thoroughgoing countryman, and I know a lot about farming; and you know how I can jump and run, and a good light weight with the gloves I am; but this job beats me altogether. 'Pay your footing, sir, pay your footing!' You'll have to pay for my headstone, George, if you keep me on much longer. How you can go on all day long—but I want you to do something for me, and by the Powers, I have earned it."
He wanted me to promise, in return for all his labours, to give up my plans for the evening, and present myself at dinner-time for the ceremony at the cottage. This, though a very simple business, must be done in the proper form; and then it would be my duty perhaps to offer to take a hand at whist, and be ready for the wearisome wrangle, which even well-bred people make of it. But I had nobler fish to fry.
"Tom, I can't do it. You like that sort of thing; and my mother is delighted with your sprightly little tales. Go and put your brave apparel on. Everybody admires you; and you love that."
He knew that he did. Why should he deny it? The happiness of mankind is pleasure, though it passes without our knowledge, because we never can stop to think of it,—as a man in a coach sees the hedges race by; and if it comes to that, where may you find true bliss so near at home, as in being pleased with your own good self? Our Tom had a happy time. Nothing long tormented him. He carried a lofty standard with him, and flopped its white folds joyously at little gnats and buzzing bees; and he never failed to come up to it, because that standard was himself. "What else could it be?" he says to me. "And that is why everybody likes me."