"You're very kind," said Aaron, "but I don't figure to take advantage of it. Still, living's hard; so much trouble. Take me; here I am bound down to a farm's got as many rocks in it as anything else. I've been as far south as Attleboro, but I've never had a view of the world, like you've had. I'll die as I've lived, without anything to be grateful for, so far as I can see."
"You've had more to be grateful for than I ever had," said Mr. Jeminy simply, "and I'm not complaining."
"Go along," said Aaron; "you're speaking out of kindness. But it doesn't fool me any. I know you've led a wandering life, Mr. Jeminy. But I'd admire to see a little something of the world myself."
Above them the smoke from Aaron's chimney, thin and blue, rose bending like an Indian pipe in the still air. And Mr. Jeminy gazed at it in silence, before replying:
"You have had the good things of life, Aaron Bade."
"Have I?" said Aaron bitterly. "I'm sure I didn't know it. What are the good things of life, Mr. Jeminy?"
"Love," said Mr. Jeminy, "peace, quiet of the heart, the work of one's hands. Perhaps it is human to wish for more. But to be human is not always to be wise. Do you desire to see the world, Aaron Bade? Soon you would ask to be home again."
"Well, I don't know about that," said Aaron.
"Ah," said Mr. Jeminy, "love is best of all."
And once again he relapsed into silence. In the evening he drove the cows in. High up on Hemlock, Aaron, among his slow, thin tunes, thought to himself: "There go the cows. Mr. Jeminy understands me; he's a traveled man." And he played his flute harder than ever, because Mr. Jeminy, who had seen, as Aaron thought, all Aaron had wanted to see, breathed the airs of foreign lands, and sailed the seven seas, was setting Aaron's cows to right, in Aaron's tumbled barn.