Once decided he seemed to go rather mad about it, buying agricultural
paraphernalia recklessly and indiscriminately for a meditated assault upon fields long fallow.
Connor already had as much as he could attend to in the garden; but, like all Irishmen, he had a cousin, and the cousin possessed agricultural lore and a pair of plough-horses.
So early fall ploughing developed into a mania with Clive and Athalie; and they formed a habit of sitting side by side like a pair of birds on fences in the early October sunshine, their fascinated eyes following the brown furrows turning where one T. Phelan was breaking up pasture and meadow too long sod-bound.
In intervals between tenderer and more intimate exchange of sentiments they discussed such subjects as lime, nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and the rotation of crops.
Also Athalie had accumulated much literature concerning incubators, brooders, and the several breeds of domestic fowl; and on paper they had figured out overwhelming profits.
The insidious land-hunger which attacks all who contemplate making two dozen blades of grass grow where none grew before, now seized upon Clive and gnawed him. And he extended the acreage, taking in woods and uplands as far as the headwaters of Spring Pond Brook, vastly to Athalie's delight.
So the October days burned like a procession of golden flames passing in magic sequence amid yellowing woods and over the brown and spongy gold of salt meadows which had been sheared for stable bedding. And
everywhere over their land lay the dun-coloured velvet squares of freshly ploughed fields awaiting unfragrant fertilizer and the autumn rains.