The next morning I did not urge Miss Goodwin to come to the farm. In fact, I urged her to sit in the sun and rest. It was a glorious day, a real June day, though June was not due till the following Wednesday. It was Sunday, the Sunday preceding Memorial Day. But, as my farm was so far from the centre of the village, and my lawn was so screened from the roads by the house on one side and the pines and maples on the other, I resolved to hazard my reputation and go at my lawn, which the rain at last had settled. I hitched the horse to my improvised drag and smoothed it again, several times, in default of a roller. Then I led the horse back to the barn.
As I came to the barn door again, a carryall was passing, with a woman and a stout girl on the back seat, and another stout girl and a man on the front seat. The women were dressed in their starched best, the man, an elderly farmer with a white beard, in the blue uniform and slouch hat of the G. A. R. They were going to Memorial service. I instinctively saluted as the old fellow nodded to me in his friendly, country way, and he dropped the reins with a pleased smile and brought his own hand snap up to his hat brim. I watched the carryall disappear, hearing it rattle over the bridge across my brook, and for the first time felt myself a stranger in this community. I suddenly wanted to go with them to church, to hear the drone of the organ and the soft wind rushing by the open windows, bringing in the scent of lilacs, to see the faces of my neighbours about me, to chat with them on the church steps when the service was over. I realized how absorbed I had been in my own little farm, and resolved to begin getting acquainted with the town as soon as possible. Then I picked up a rake, and went back to the lawn.
As soon as I had eliminated the horse’s hoofprints, I got a bag of lawn seed and scattered it, probably using a good deal more than was necessary. Mike had assured me it was too late to sow grass, but I hoped for fool’s luck. I sowed it carefully about the sundial beds, so that none should fall on them, but over the rest of the lawn I let it fall from on high, delighting in the way it drifted with the gentle wind on its drop to earth. I had not sown long before the birds began to come, by ones, then by twos and threes and fours, till it seemed as if fifty of them were hopping about. I shooed them away, but back they came.
“Well,” thought I, “lawn seed is not so terribly expensive, and they can’t pick it all up!” I scattered it thicker than ever, and then harrowed it under a little with a rake, working till one o’clock, for Sunday dinner was at one-thirty. Then I went back to Bert’s, with only a peep into my big south room to see how cheerful it looked. I found Miss Goodwin still sitting where I had left her, under the sycamore before the house.
“You see, I’ve obeyed,” she smiled. “I’ve not read, nor even thought. I’ve ’jest set.’ But I’m beginning to get restless.”
“Good,” said I. “Shall we celebrate the Sabbath by taking a walk? I’d like to have you show me Bentford.”
She assented, and right after dinner we set out, I having donned my knickerbockers and a collar for the first time since my arrival, and feeling no little discomfort from the starched band around my throat.
“The size of it is,” I groaned, “all my clothes are now too small for me. If you stay here till July, you’ll probably have to send for an entire new wardrobe.”
“That’s the fear which haunts me,” she smiled, as we crossed my brook and turned up the hill toward the first of the big estates. In front of this estate we paused and peeped through the hedge. The family had evidently arrived, for the unmistakable sounds of a pianola were issuing from the house. The great formal garden, still gay with Darwin tulips and beginning to show banks of iris flowers against lilac shrubbery, looked extremely expensive. The residence itself, of brown stucco, closely resembled a sublimated $100,000 ice-house. An expensive motor stood before the door.
“How rich and ugly it is,” said Miss Goodwin, turning away. “Let’s not look at houses. Let’s find some woods to walk in.”