At twenty minutes to five he landed once more amongst Mr. Dodge’s swedes. The breezy young airman shook hands with him and departed inland. Old Sam sat down and surveyed the field.
“A noice thing, I must say,” he muttered to himself, as he looked along the lines of unthinned turnips. He still had twenty minutes, and so he went slowly along and completed a line which he had commenced in the morning. He then deliberately packed up his dinner-things and his tools, and started out for home.
As he came round the corner of Stillway’s Meadow, and the cottage came in view, his niece stepped out of the copse with a basket on her arm.
“Well, uncle,” she said, “is there any noos?”
It was then that old Sam became really irritated.
“Noos!” he said. “Noos! drat the girl! What noos should there be? Sixty-nine year I live in these here parts, hoein’ and weedin’ and thinnin’, and mindin’ Charlie Dodge’s sheep. Am I one o’ these here storybook folk havin’ noos ’appen to me all the time? Ain’t it enough, ye silly dab-faced zany, to earn enough to buy a bite o’ some’at to eat, and a glass o’ beer, and a place to rest a’s head o’night, without always wantin’ noos, noos, noos! I tell ’ee, it’s this that leads ’ee to ’alf the troubles in the world. Devil take the noos!”
And turning his back on her, he went fuming up the hill.