He walked slowly, his hands in his pockets, to where the gable of the booth jutted between him and his questioners. From here he could see the slope of Boarzell, rolling slowly down to some red roofs and poplars. These roofs and poplars were Odiam, the farm which his grandfather had bought, which his father had tilled and fattened ... and now it was humbled, robbed of its rights—and his father still went whistling to the barn, because, though fifty acres had been withheld from him by a quibble, he still had a bright fire, with a pretty wife and healthy boys beside it.
Reuben's lip curled. He could not help despising his father for this ambitionless content.
"We're no worser off than we wur before," Joseph Backfield had said a day or two ago to his complaining boy—"we've our own meadows for the cows—'täun't as if we were poor people."
"But, fäather, think wot we might have had—forty acres inclosed for us, like they have at Grandturzel."
"'Might have—might have'—that döan't trouble me. It's wot I've got I think about. And then, say we had it—wot 'ud you mäake out o' Boarzell?—nasty mess o' marl and shards, no good to anyone as long as thistles äun't fashionable eating."
"I cud mäake something out of Boarzell."
At this his father burst into a huge fit of laughter, and Reuben walked away.
But he knew he could do it. That morning he churned the soil with his heel, and knew he could conquer it.... He could plant those thistle-grounds with wheat.... Coward! his father was a coward if he shrank from fighting Boarzell. The land could be tamed just as young bulls could be tamed. By craft, by strength, by toughness man could fight the nature of a waste as well as of a beast. Give him Boarzell, and he would have his spade in its red back, just as he would have his ring in a bull's nose....
But it was all hopeless. Most likely in future all that would remain free to him of Boarzell would be this Fair ground, crowded once a year. The rest would be built over—fat shop-keepers would grow fatter—oh, durn it!