Chapter XXI: We Make Hay

SUNDAY it rained until late in the afternoon, but at that time a
westerly wind sprang up which rapidly dried things, and enabled
us to go out for a sunset walk.

“This is a place in which to do nothing but be happy,” said
Cherry to Ethel as we stood on top of our favorite rock and
looked up the valley for miles and miles, watching belated and
feathery clouds fly across it, trying to catch up with the rain
clouds that had all day long swept by.

“That’s what I felt when I first came up,” said Ethel, “but I’m
beginning to feel so strong now that Philip has sent for a lawn
tennis set, and James is going to mark a court, and you and I
can play against Philip.”

“Yes, and while we’re waiting for it to come,” said I, “we’ll
have to pitch in and give our next-door neighbour a spell of
work at hay-making.”

“What’s a spell of work?” asked Cherry.

“Why, it’s falling to, and helping your neighbour this week, and
next week he falls to, and helps you.”

“Oh, how delicious. And do you know how to make hay?”

“Anyone can learn how in a single morning. First you cut it,
then you toss it, and then you gather it. It’s as easy as
lying.”

“I’m afraid I’ll never learn it,” said Cherry demurely.

“I was reading somewhere,” said I, “that in Germany, where they
learn to be economical from the beginning, the navy is
supported—or else it’s the army is supported entirely on the hay
that Americans would leave in the corners and the by-ways. I’ve
no doubt that the Emperor William commands his people in a
heaven-sent message to get out their nail scissors and cut the
little blades in the remote corners that nothing be lost, and as
‘mony a mickle maks a muckle,’ he pays for his army out of the
hay crop that would become withered grass with us. Now
to-morrow, when we go over to help the Windhams, you must
remember to account each blade of grass as equal in value to any
other blade.”

“What will Mr. Windham say to women working?”

“Well, the idea! Ethel. Did any Yankee farmer ever object to
women working? And isn’t it better to work out-of-doors than to
work indoors? I’d rather you lifted forkfuls of hay than have
you lift heavy mattresses and furniture and things, and it’s
better to rake hay than to sweep floors.”

“When Philip gets on a topic like that, the best thing to do is
to just let him talk it out,” said Ethel. “Don’t say a word, and
he’ll burn up for lack of fuel.”

“Which is a logical remark,” said I.

“But it will be too perfectly delightful to go out like Boaz and
glean.”

“You may possibly mean Ruth,” said I.

“I do. I always mix them up. Boaz seems like a woman’s name. Do
you think it will rain to-morrow?”

“To-morrow,” said I, with a glance at the west where the sun, a
red ball, was disappearing in a cloudless sky, “will be a good
hay day.”

And to-morrow was. We rose and breakfasted early and found when
we looked at the thermometer that it was already 78, but there
was a west wind blowing to temper the heat.

“They’re already at work, aren’t they?” said Cherry as we
started out, the women clad in walking skirts and shirt-waists
and broad-brimmed hats, and I bare headed and outing shirted.

“My dear child, they have been at work for the last four hours.”

I had told Windham what to expect, and when he saw us coming he
said, “That’s right. The more the merrier. You’ll find rakes
there by the fence.”

I told him that I would mow a little, as I had done it when a
boy.

“Good work,” said he, and let me take his own scythe while he
drove a loaded wagon home.

I started in at a field that they had not intended to attack
until after lunch, but Windham said it would make no difference.
Ethel and Cherry raked as if they were sweeping, and I am not
sure that their money value could have been represented by any
undue use of figures. I vaulted the fence and began my fell
work, taking care to keep close to the edge and demolishing
every last blade of grass. I also found that my method of attack
spared a little mouthful of grass at each stroke, and when I had
gone down the length of the field and had stuck the point of the
scythe in the earth twice, and had cut the end off of a stone,
and had lunged into the fence, I determined to rest a minute and
try to recall the proper way in which to hold the scythe.

The way back was easier, as I was now one remove from the fence.
I poised the scythe in such a manner that I reaped what I had
before spared, but found, upon looking back over the path by
which I had come, that I had spared a few inches in each swathe.
I seemed to be unable to make a long, clean sweep. And my back
felt like breaking and I was sweating in a manner unbecoming a
gentleman.

That, however, did not worry me at all, as I reflected that on
my father’s side I was the first gentleman that had appeared in
America for nine generations—all the rest had been of the bone
and sinew of the nation.

When people talk about pride of ancestry in my hearing, and
their pride of ancestry is based on the fact that they have had
fine blood in their veins for generations, I inflate my chest
and tell them about my maternal ancestors, the Durbans. Not a
man did a stroke of work for eight generations, and they lived
in cities and looked down on country folk in a manner that was
as aristocratic as could be. When my mother married my father,
who had been born and bred a country boy, all the Durbans held
up their hands in holy horror and said that my mother would
never draw a happy breath again.

Yet she went on drawing one happy breath after another, until
she died, and my father knew his first unhappiness when she
departed.

But when I meet people who laugh at lineage and genealogy, I do
not speak of the Durbans at all. I say, “Yes, pride of lineage
is foolish. The Vernons have been plain country folk ever since
they came over in 1639, and not one of them was ever celebrated
for anything—not even for his wickedness. They’ve just been
Yankee countrymen, and so, of course, pride of ancestry is a
foolish thing.”

Whenever you hear a man laughing at pride of ancestry, you may
be sure that his ancestors were no better than my fathers were.
But if he is always talking about his ancestry, depend upon it,
he has something back of him as good as the Durbans, and his
forbears looked down on farmers.

We worked until the whistles at Egerton blew for noon, and I had
by that time devastated quite a patch of grass.

Windham had been busy in other places all the morning, and when
he came to look at what I had done he made no reference to the
thrift of the Germans. He looked at the regular patches of
spared blades that were holding their heads high amidst the
blades that had fallen so bravely, and said,

“How would you like to drive the rake this afternoon?”

I blushed and said that I believed that would be a change of
work.

I did not laugh at the somewhat amateur raking of Ethel and
Cherry. Hay-making is an art, and beginners learn better by
encouragement than by ridicule.

We had brought our lunch, and we picnicked under the spreading
branches of an oak, and found that we were feeling “pretty
good.” And we had six red arms to our credit—four of them
pretty.

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