 Chapter 8 of They and I by Jerome K. Jerome. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Deborah Lynn. They and I by Jerome K. Jerome. Chapter 8. Robin's letter was dated Monday evening and reached us Tuesday morning. I hope you caught your train, she wrote. Veronica did not get back till half past six. She informed me that you and she had found a good deal to talk about and that one thing had led to another. She is a quaint young imp, but I think your lecture must have done her good. Her present attitude is that of gentle forbearance to all around her, not without its dignity. She has not snorted once and at times is really helpful. I have given her an empty scribbling diary we found in your desk and most of her spare time she remains shut up with it in the bedroom. She tells me you and she are writing a book together. I asked her what about? She waved me aside with the assurance that I would know all in good time and that it was going to do good. I caught sight of just the title page last night. It was lying open on the dressing table. Why the man in the moon looks sad upon. It sounds like a title of yours, but I would not look further though tempted. She has drawn a picture underneath. It is really not bad. The old gentleman really does look sad upon and intensely disgusted. Sir Robert, his name being Theodore, which doesn't seem to suit him, turns out to be the only son of a widow, a Mrs. Foy, our next-door neighbor to the south. We met her coming out of church on Sunday morning. She was still crying. Dick took Veronica on ahead and I walked part of the way home with them. Her grandfather, it appears, was killed many years ago by the bursting of a boiler and she is haunted, poor lady, by the conviction that Theodore is the inheritor of an hereditary tendency to getting himself blown up. She attaches no blame to us, seeing in Saturday's catastrophe only the hand of the family curse. I tried to comfort her with the idea that the curse, having spent itself upon a futile effort, nothing further need now be feared from it. But she persists in taking the gloomier view that in wrecking our kitchen Theodore's doom, as she calls it, was merely indulging in a sort of dress rehearsal. The finishing performance may be relied upon to follow. It sounds ridiculous, but the poor woman was so desperately in earnest that when an unlucky urchin coming out of a cottage we were passing, tripped on the doorstep and let fall a jug, we both screamed at the same time and were equally surprised to find Sir Robert still between us and all in one piece. I thought it foolish to discuss all this before the child himself, but did not like to stop her. As a result, he regards himself evidently as the chosen foe of heaven and is not unnaturally proud of himself. She called here this Monday afternoon to leave cards, and at her request they showed her the kitchen and the mat over which he had stumbled. She seemed surprised that the doom had let slip so favorable a chance of accomplishing its business and gathered from the fact added cause for anxiety. It was only half a pound of gunpowder, she told me, Dr. Small Boy's gardener had bought it for the purpose of raising the stump of an old elm tree and had left it for a moment on the grass while he had returned to the house for more brown paper. She seemed pleased with the gardener, who, as she said, might, if dishonestly inclined, have charged her for a pound. I wanted to pay for at all events our share, but she would not take a penny. Late lamented grandfather, she regards as the person responsible for the entire incident, and perhaps it may be as well not to disturb her view. Had I suggested it, I feel sure she would have seen the justice of her providing us with a new kitchen range. Wildly exaggerated accounts of the affair are flying round the neighborhood, and my cheap fear is that Veronica may discover she is a local celebrity. Your sudden disappearance is supposed to have been heavenward. An old farm laborer who saw you pass on your way to the station speaks of you as the ghost of the poor gentleman himself, and fragments of clothing found anywhere within a radius of two miles are being preserved, I am told, as specimens of your remains. Boots would appear to have been your chief apparel. Seven pairs have already been collected from the surrounding ditches. Among the more public spirited there is talk of using you to start a local museum. These first three paragraphs I did not read to Ethel Bertha. Fortunately, they just filled the first sheet, which I took an opportunity of slipping into my pocket unobserved. The new boy arrived on Sunday morning, she continued. His name, if I have got it right, is William. Anyhow, that is the nearest I can get to it. His other name, if any, I must leave you to extract from him yourself. It may be Bertha that he talks, but it sounds more like barking. Please excuse the pun, but I have just been talking to him for half an hour, trying to make him understand that I want him to go home, and maybe as a result I am feeling a little hysterical. Anything more rural I cannot imagine. But he is anxious to learn, and a fairly wide field is in front of him. I caught him after our breakfast on Sunday, calmly throwing everything left over onto the dust heap. I pointed out to him the wickedness of wasting nourishing food, and impressed upon him that the proper place for vitals was inside us. He never answers. He stands stock still, with his mouth as wide open as it will go, which is saying a good deal, and one trusts that one's words are entering into him. All Sunday afternoon he was struggling valiantly against an almost supernatural sleepiness. After tea he got worse, and I began to think he would be no use to me. We none of us ate much supper, and Dick, who appears able to understand him, helped him to carry the things out. I heard them talking, and then Dick came back and closed the door behind him. He wants to know, said Dick, if he can leave the corned beef over till tomorrow, because if he eats it all tonight he doesn't think he will be able to walk home. Veronica takes great interest in him. She has evidently a motherly side to her character, for which we none of us have given her credit. She says she is sure there is good in him. She sits beside him while he chops wood, and tells him carefully selected stories calculated, she argues, to develop his intelligence. She is careful, moreover, not to hurt his feelings by any display of superiority. Of course, anyone leading a useful life, such as yours, I overheard her saying to him this morning, don't naturally get much time for reading. I have nothing else to do, you see, except to improve myself. The donkey arrived this afternoon while I was out, galloping, I am given to understand, with opkins on his back. There seems to be some secret between those two. We have tried him with hay and we have tried him with thistles, but he seems to prefer bread and butter. I have not been able as yet to find out whether he takes tea or coffee in the morning, but he is an animal that evidently knows his own mind, and fortunately both are in the house. We are putting him up for tonight with the cow, who greeted him at first with enthusiasm and wanted to adopt him, but has grown cold to him since on discovering that he is not a calf. I have been trying to make friends with her, but she is so very unresponsive. She doesn't seem to want anything but grass and prefers to get that for herself. She doesn't seem to want to be happy ever again. A funny thing happened in church, I was forgetting to tell you. The St. Leonard's occupied two pews at the opposite end from the door. They were all there when we arrived, with the exception of the old gentleman himself. He came in just before the dearly beloved when everybody was standing up. A running fire of suppressed titters followed him up the aisle, and some of the people laughed outright. I could see no reason why. He looked a dignified old gentleman in his gray hair and tightly buttoned frock coat, which gives him a somewhat military appearance. But when he came level with our pew, I understood. Hurrying back from his morning round and with no one there to super intend him, the dear old absent-minded thing had forgotten to change his breeches. From a little above the knee upward he was a perfect Christian, but his legs were just those of a disreputable sinner. What's the joke, he whispered to me as he passed? I was in the corner seat. Have I missed it? We called round on them after lunch, and at once I was appealed to for my decision. Now here's a plain sensible girl, exclaimed the old gentleman the moment I entered the room. You will notice I put no comma after plain. I am taking it he did not intend one. You can employ one adjective to qualify another, can't you? And I will put it to her. What difference can it make to the Almighty, whether I go to church in trousers or in breeches? I do not see, retorted Mrs. St. Leonard, somewhat coldly, that Ms. Robbina is in any better position than myself to speak with authority on the views of the Almighty, which I felt was true. If it makes no difference to the Almighty, then why not for my sake, trousers? The essential thing, he persisted, is a contrite heart. He was getting very cross. It may just as well be dressed respectively, was his wife's opinion. He left the room slamming the door. I do like Janey the more and more I see of her. I do hope she will let me get real chums with her. She does me so much good. I read that bit twice over to Ethel Bertha, pretending I had lost the place. I suppose it is having rather a silly mother and an unpractical father that has made her so capable. If you and little mother had been proper sort of parents, I might have been quite a decent sort of girl. But it's too late finding fault with you now. I suppose I must put up with you. She works so hard and is so unselfish, but she is not like some good people who make you feel it is hopeless. You're trying to be good. She gets cross and impatient, and then she laughs at herself and gets right again that way. Poor Mrs. St. Leonard, I cannot help feeling sorry for her. She would have been so happy as the wife of a really respectable city man who would have gone off every morning with a flower in his buttonhole and have worn a white waistcoat on Sundays. I don't believe what they say, that husbands and wives should be the opposite of one another. Mr. St. Leonard ought to have married a brainy woman who would have discussed philosophy with him and have been just as happy drinking beer out of a tea cup. You know the sort I mean. If ever I marry, it will be a short tempered man who loves music and is a good dancer. And if I find out too late that he's clever, I'll run away from him. Dick has not yet come home, nearly eight o'clock. Veronica is supposed to be in bed, but I can hear things falling. Poor boy, I expect he'll be tired, but today is an exception. Three hundred sheep have had to be brought all the way from Isley and must be herded, I fancy it is called, before anybody can think of supper. I saw to it that he had a good dinner. And now to come to business. Young Butte has been here all day and is only just left. He is coming down again on Friday, which, by the way, don't forget is Mrs. St. Leonard's at home day. She hopes you may then have the pleasure of making your acquaintance and thinks that possibly there may be present one or two people we may like to know. From which I gather that half the neighborhood has been specially invited to meet you. So mind you bring a froth coat, and if little mother can put her hand easily on my pink muslin with the spots, it is either in my wardrobe or else in the bottom drawer in Veronica's room. If it isn't in the cardboard box underneath mother's bed, you might slip it into your bag. But whatever you do, don't crush it. The sash, I feel, sure mother put away somewhere herself. He sees no reason. I'm talking now about young Butte. If you approve his plans, why work should not be commenced immediately. Shall I write old Slee to meet you at the house on Friday? From all accounts, I don't think you'll do better. He is on the spot and they say he is most reasonable. But you have to get estimates, don't you? He suggests, Mr. Butte, I mean, throwing what used to be the dairy into the passage which will make a haul big enough for anything. We might even give a dance in it, he thinks. But all this you will be able to discuss with him on Friday. He has evidently taken a great deal of pains and some of his suggestions sound sensible. But of course he must fully understand that it is what we want, not what he thinks that is important. I told him you said I could have my room exactly as I liked it myself, and I have explained to him my ideas. He seemed at first to be under the impression that I didn't know what I was talking about, so I made it quite clear to him that I did with the result that he is consented to carry out my instructions on condition that I put them down in black and white, which I think just as well as then there can be no excuse afterwards for argument. I like him better than I did the first time. About everything else he can be fairly amiable. It is when he talks about frontal elevations and ground plans that he irritates me. Tell little mother that I'll ride her tomorrow. Couldn't she come down with you on Friday? Everything will be ship shaped by then, and the remainder was of a nature more private. She concluded with a post script which also I did not read to Ethel Bertha. Thought I had finished telling you everything, when quite a stylish rat tat sounded on the door. I placed an old straw hat of dicks in a prominent position, called loudly to an imaginary John not to go without the letters, and then opened it. He turned out to be the local reporter. I need not have been alarmed. He was much more nervous of the two, and was so full of excuses that had I not come to his rescue I believe he would have gone away for getting what he'd come for. Nothing saved an overwhelming sense of duty to the public, but the capital P could have induced him to inflict himself upon me. Could I give him a few details which would enable him to set rumor right? I immediately saw visions of headlines, domestic tragedy, eminent author blown up by his own daughter, once happy home, now a mere wreck. It seemed to me our only plan was to enlist this amiable young man upon our side. I hope I did not overdo it. My idea was to convey the impression that one glance at him had convinced me he was the best and noblest of mankind, that I felt I could rely upon his wit encouraged to save us from a notoriety that, so far as I was concerned, would sadden my whole life, and that if he did so eternal gratitude and admiration would be the least I could lay at his feet. I can be nice when I try. People have said so. We parted with only a pressure of the hand, and I hope he won't get into trouble, but I see the Berkshire Courier is going to be deprived of its prey. Dick has just come in. He promises to talk when he has finished eating. Dick's letter, for which Ethelbertha seemed to be strangely impatient, reached us down Wednesday morning. If ever you want to find out, Dad, what hard work really means, you try farming, wrote Dick. And yet I believe you would like it. Hasn't some old Johnny somewhere described it as the poetry of the plowshare? Why did we ever take to bothering about anything else, shutting ourselves up in stuffy offices, worrying ourselves to death about a lot of rubbish that isn't any good to anybody? I wish I could put it properly, Dad, you would see just what I mean. Why don't we live in simply built houses and get most everything we want out of the land, which we easily could. You take a dozen poor devils away from walking behind the plow and put them down into coal mines and set them running about half naked among a lot of roaring furnaces, and between them they turn out a machine that does the plowing for them. What is the sense of it? Of course, some things are useful. I would like a motor car, and railways and steamboats are all right, but it seems to me that half the fiddle faddles we fancy we want, we'd be just as well, if not better without, and there would be all that time and energy to spare for the sort of things that everybody ought to have. It's everywhere, just like it was at school. They kept us so hard at it, studying Greek roots, we hadn't time to learn English grammar. Look at young Dennis Ubery. He's got 2,000 acres up in Scotland. He could lead a jolly life turning the place into some real use, instead of which he lets it all run to waste for nothing but to breed a few hundred birds that wouldn't keep a single family alive, while he works from morning till night at humbugging people in a beastly hole in the city just to fill his house with a host of silly gim cracks and dress up himself and his women folk like peacocks. Of course, we would always want clever chaps like you to tell us stories and doctors we couldn't do without, though I guess if we were leading sensible lives we'd be able to get along with about half of them. It seems to me that what we want is a comfortable home enough to eat and drink and a few falal sort of things to make the girls look pretty, and that all the rest is rod. We would all of us have time then to think and play a bit, and if we were all working fairly at something really useful and were contented with our own share, there'd be enough for everybody. I suppose this is all nonsense, but I wish it wasn't. Anyway, it's what I mean to do myself, and I'm awfully much obliged to you, Dad, for giving me this chance. You've hit the right nail on the head this time. Farming was what I was meant for. I feel it. I would have hated being a barrister, setting people by the ears and making my living out of other people's troubles. Being a farmer, you feel that in doing good to yourself you are doing good all round. Miss Janie agrees with all I say. I think she is one of the most sensible girls I have ever come to see. So is the old man. He's a brick. I think he has taken a liking to me and I know I have to him. He's the dearest old fellow imaginable. The very turnips he seems to think of as though there were so many rows of little children and he makes you see the inside of things. Take fields now for instance. I used to think a field was just a field. You scraped it about and planted it with seeds and everything else depended on the weather. Why, Dad, it's the fields that want to get on that are grateful for everything you do for them and take a pride in themselves. And there are brutes of fields that you feel you want to kick. You can waste a hundred pounds worth of manure on them and it only makes them more stupid than they were before. One of our fields, a wizened looking 11 acres trip bordering the five field road, he has christened Mrs. Gummidge. It seems to me that field gets the most harm from it. You would think to look at it after a storm that there hadn't been any rain in any other field that that particular field must have got it all while two days sunshine has the effect upon it that a six weeks drought would on any other field. His theory he must have a theory to account for everything. It comforts him. He has just hit upon a theory that explains why twins are born with twice as much original sin as other children they do is that each odd corner of the earth has gained a character of its own from the spirits of the countless dead men buried in its bosom. Robbers and thieves he will say, kicking the side of some field all stones and thistles, silly fighting men who thought God built the world merely to give them the fun of knocking it about. Look at them, the fools, stones and thistles, thistles and stones that is smelling soil he will stretch out his arms as though to caress it. Brave lads he will say, kindly honest fellows who loved the poor peasant folk. I fancy he has not got much sense of humor or if he has it is a humor he leaves you to find out for yourself. One does not feel one wants to laugh listening even to his most whimsical ideas and anyhow it is a fact that of two fields quite close to one another and there seems to be nothing to explain it. We have a seven acre patch just half way up the hill he says he never passes it without taking off his hat to it. Whatever you put in it does well while other fields try them with what you will it is always the very thing they did not want. You might fancy them fractious children always crying for the other child's bun. There is really no reason for half the day hides it from the son but it makes the best of everything and even on the grayest day it seems to be smiling at you. Some happy hearted mother thing a singer of love songs the while she toiled he will have it must lie sleeping there by the by what a jolly field Janie would make don't you think so dad what the Dickens dad have you done to Veronica she wanders about everywhere with an exercise she sits plump down wherever she is and writes for all she's worth she won't say what she's up to she says it's a private matter between you and her and that later on things are going to be seen in their true light. I told her this morning what I thought of her for forgetting to feed the donkey I was prepared of course for a hundred explanations first that she had meant to feed the donkey secondly that it wasn't her place to feed the donkey had not arisen rendering it impossible for her to feed the donkey fourthly that the morning wasn't the proper time to feed the donkey and so on instead of which out she whips this ridiculous book and asks me if I would mind saying it over again I keep forgetting to ask Janie what it is he has been accustomed to we have tried him with thistles and we've tried him with hay the thistles he scratches himself against but for the hay he appears to have no use whatever the idea is to save us trouble we are not to get in anything especially for him whatever we may happen to be having ourselves he will put up with bread and butter cut thick or slice of cake with an apple seems to be his notion of a light lunch and for drink he fancies tea out of a slot basin with two knobs of sugar and plenty of milk robin says it's a waste of time taking his meals out to him she says I don't know what I shall do when the cow goes away she wakes me every morning punctually at half past four but I'm in a blue funk that one of these days she will oversleep herself it is one of those clocks you read about you wrote something rather funny about one once yourself but I always thought you had invented it I bought it because they said it was an extra loud one and so it is the thing I set it on Sunday evening for half past four we farmers do have to work I can tell you but it's worth it I had no idea that the world was so beautiful there was a light you never see it any other time and the whole air seems to be full of fluttering song you feel but you must get up and come out with me dad I can't describe it if it hadn't been for the good old cow Lord knows what time they were down to tea and frightened them all out of their skins we have fiddled about with it all we know but there's no getting it to do anything between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. anything you want of it and the daytime it is quite agreeable to but it seems to have fixed its own working hours and isn't going to be bustled out of its proper rest I got so mad with it myself about it she means I said I thought alarm clocks were pretty well played out by this time but as she says there is always a new generation coming along to whom almost everything must be fresh anyhow the confounded thing costs 7 and 6 and seems to be no good for anything else whatever was it that you really did say to robin about her room young but came round to me on Monday quite upset about that eastern lighthouse he says there will be no place for the bed and if there is to be a fireplace at all it will have to be in the cupboard and that the only way so far as he can see of her getting in and out of it will be by a door through the bathroom she said that you said she could have it entirely to her own idea and that he was just to carry out her instructions but as he points out you can't have a room in a house as if the rest of the house wasn't there but it seems will be able to have a bath without first talking it over with her and arranging a time mutually convenient I told him I was sure you never meant him to do anything absurd and that his best plan would be to go straight back to her explain to her that she'd been talking like a silly goat he could have put it politely of course and that he wasn't going to pay any attention to her you might have done to him but he seems quite frightened of her I had to promise that I would talk to her he'd better have done it himself I only told her just what he said and off she went in one of her tantrums you know her style if she liked to live in a room where she could see to do her hair that was no business of his and if he couldn't design a plain simple bedroom that wasn't going to look ridiculous and make her the laughing stock of the sort of person entitled to go about the country building houses that if he thought the proper place for a fire was in a cupboard she didn't that his duty was to carry out the instructions of his employers and if he imagined for a moment she was going to consent to remain shut up in her room till everybody in the house had finished bathing it would be better for us to secure the services of somebody possessed of a little common sense that she doesn't want a bedroom now of any sort perhaps she may be permitted to shake down in the pantry or perhaps Veronica will allow her an occasional night's rest with her and if not it doesn't matter you'll have to talk to her yourself I'm not going to say anymore don't forget that Friday is the St. Leonard's at home day I've promised Janie that you will come everybody is coming and all the children are having their hair washed you will have it all your own way down here there's no other celebrity till you get to boss croak or the Tammany man the other side of Ilsley Downes artists they don't count the rumor was all round the place last week that you were here incognito in the rather mad when I saw him I suppose it was the whiskey that suggested the idea to them they have got the notion in these parts that a literary man is a sort of inspired tramp a Mrs. Jaggers suede or some such name whom I met here on Sunday and who is coming on Friday took me aside and asked me what sort of things you said advise her to bring the children I say you will have to talk seriously to Veronica country life seems to agree with her she's taken to poaching already she and the twins it was the one sin that hitherto they had never committed and I fancy the old man was feeling proud of this luckily I caught them coming home with ten dead rabbits strung on a pole the twins carrying it between them on their shoulders Veronica scouting on ahead with every ten yards her ear to the ground listening for hostile footsteps the thing that troubled her most was that she hadn't heard me coming she seemed to fear that something had gone wrong with the laws of nature they had found the whole collection hanging from a tree and had persuaded themselves that Providence must have been expecting them I insisted on their going back with me and showing me the tree they are men that love making a row I talked some fine moral sentiment to her but she says you have told her that it doesn't matter whether you are good or bad things happen to you just the same and this being so she feels she may as well enjoy herself I asked her why she never seemed able to enjoy herself being good I believe if I'd always had a kid to bring up I'd have been a model chat myself by this time that was a reflection on you and little mother and she answered she guessed she must be a throwback old sleaze got a dog that ought to have been a fox terrier but isn't and he seems to have been explaining things to her a thing that will trouble you down here dad is the cruelty of the country they catch these poor little wretches in traps leaving them sometimes for days leaving it there for just two minutes by my watch it seemed like twenty the pain grows more intense with every second and I'm not a soft as you know I've laid half an hour with a broken leg and that wasn't as bad one hears the little creatures screaming but cannot find them of course when one draws near they keep silent it makes one quite disliked country people they are honored tried to get the clergyman to say something on the subject but he answered that he thought it better for the church to confine herself to the accomplishment of her own great mission ass bring little mother down we want to show her off on Friday and make her put on something pretty ask her if she's got that lilac thing with lace she wore at Cambridge for the don't let her dress herself she doesn't understand it and will you get me a gun the remainder of the letter was taken up with instructions concerning the gun it seemed a complicated sort of gun I wished I hadn't read about the gun to Ethel Bertha it made her nervous for the rest of the day Veronica's letter followed on Thursday morning I read it going down in the train in transcribing I have thought it better as regards the text to hear Veronica wrote that we are all quite well Robin works very hard but I think it does her good and of course I help her all I can I am glad she has got a boy to do the washing up I think that was too much for her it used to make her cross one cannot blame her it is trying work and it makes you mucky but it's getting better he says he went to school but they couldn't have taken any trouble with him could they the system I suppose was Robin Robin says I mustn't over do it because you want him to talk Berkshire so I propose confining our attention to the elementary rules he had never heard of Robbins and Crusoe what a life we went to church which was worse we found them in the evening the little boy that blew up our stove was there with his mother but I didn't speak to her he's got a doom that's what made him blow it up he couldn't help it so you see it wasn't my fault after all his grandfather was blown up and he's going to be blown up again later on but he is very brave and is going to make a will I said I was very clever I think it was a great day today and Mr. St. Leonard said I was bright i think Mr. Jainy very beautiful and so does Dick so she does Dick and he says she is so kind to her little brothers and sisters up. Mrs. St. Leonard has twins. They are a great anxiety to her, but she would not part from them. She has had much trouble and is sometimes very sad. I like the girl best. Her name is Winnie. She is more like a boy. His name is Wilfred, but sometimes they change clothes. Then you're done. They are only nearly seven, but they know a lot. They are going to teach me swimming. Is it not kind of them? The two older boys are at home for their holidays, but they give themselves a lot of airs, and they called me a flapper. I told him he'd be sorry when he was a man, because perhaps I'd grown up beautiful, and then he'd fall in love with me, but he said he wouldn't, so I let him see what I thought of him. The little girl is very nice. She is about my own age. Her name is Sally. We are going to write a play, but we shan't let Birdie act in it, unless he turns over a new leaf. I'm going to be a princess that doesn't know it, but only feels it, and she's going to be a wicked witch. What wants me to marry her son? What's a sight? But I won't, because I'd rather die first. End them in love with a swine herd that is genius, only nobody suspects it. I wear a crown in the last act, and everybody rejoices, except her. I think it will be good. We have nearly finished the first act. She writes very well, and has a sense of atmosphere, and I tell her what to say. Miss Janie is going to make me address with a train, and gold spangles, and Robina is going to lend me her blue necklace. Anything will do, of course, for the old witch, so it won't be much trouble to anyone. Mr. Butte is going to paint us some scenery, and we are going to invite everybody. He is very nice. Robina says he thinks too much of himself by a long chalk, but she is very critical where men are concerned. She admits it. She says she can't help it. I find him very affable, and so does Dick. We think Robina will get over it. And he has promised not to be angry with her, because I have told him that she does not mean it. It is only her way. She says she feels it is unjust of her, because really, he is rather charming. I told him that, and he said I was a dear little girl. He is going to get me a real crown. Robina says he has nice eyes. I told him that, and he laughed. There is a gentleman comes here that I think is in love with Robina, but I shouldn't say anything to her about it if I was you. She is very snappy about it. He is not handsome, but he looks good. He writes for the papers, but I don't think he is rich. And Robina is very nice to him, until he is gone. Then she gets mad. It all began with the explosion, so perhaps it was fate. He is going to keep it out of the papers as much as he can, but of course he owes a duty to the public. I am going to decline to see him. I think it better. Mr. Slee says everything will be in apple pie order tomorrow, so you can come down. And we are going to have Irish stew and roly-poly pudding. It will be a change. He is very nice, and says he was always in trouble himself when he was a little boy. It's all experience. We are all going on Friday to a party at Mr. St. Leonard's, and you have got to come too. Robina says I can wear my new frock, but we can't find the sash. It is very strange, because I remember having seen it. You didn't take it for anything, did you? We shall have to get a new one, I suppose. It is very annoying. My new shoes have also not worn well, and they ought to have, because Robina says they were expensive. The donkey has come, and he is sweet. He eats out of my hand, and lets me kiss him, but he won't go. He goes a little when you shout at him, very loud. Me and Robina went for a drive yesterday after tea, and Dick ran beside, and shouted, but he got hoarse, and then he wouldn't go no more. And Robina did not like it, because Dick shouted swear words. He says they come naturally to you when you shout, and Robina said it was horrible, and the people would hear him. So we got out and pushed him home, but he is very strong, and we were all very tired, and Robina says she hates him. Dick is going to give Mr. Hopkins half a crown to tell him how he makes him go, because Mr. Hopkins makes him gallop. Robina says it must be hypnotism, but Dick thinks it might be something simpler. I think Mr. Hopkins very nice. He says you promised to lend him a book, what would help him to talk like a real country boy. So I have lent him a book about a window by Mr. Bain, what came to see us last year. It has a lot of funny words in it, and he is going to learn them up, but he don't know what they mean. No more do I. I have written a lot of the book. It promises to be very interesting. It is all a dream. He is just the ordinary grown-up father, neither better nor worse, and he goes up and up. It is a pleasant sensation. Till he reaches the moon, and there everything is different. It is the children that know everything, and are always right, and the grown-ups have to do all what they tell them. They are kind but firm. It is very good for him, and when he wakes up he is a better man. I put down everything that occurs to me, like you suggested. There was quite a lot of it, and it makes you see how unjustly children are treated. They said I was to feed the donkey, because it was my donkey, and that fed him, and there wasn't enough supper for Dick. And Dick said I was an idiot, and Robin said I wasn't to feed him, and in the morning there wasn't anything to feed him on, because he won't eat anything but bread and butter, and the baker hadn't come, and he wasn't there, because the man that comes to milk the cow had left the door open, and I was distracted, and Dick asked had I fed him, and of course I hadn't fed him, and Lord how Dick talked, never waited to hear anything mind you. I let him talk, but it just shows you. We are all very happy, but shall be pleased to see you once again. The peppermint creams down here are not good, and are very dear, compared with London prices. Isn't this a good letter? You said I was to always write just as I thought, so I'm doing it. I think that's all. I read selections from this letter allowed to Ethel Bertha. She said she was glad she had decided to come down with me. End of Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Of They and I by Jerome K. Jerome This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Deborah Lynn. They and I by Jerome K. Jerome. Chapter 9 Had all things gone as ordered, our arrival at the St. Leonard's on Friday afternoon would have been imposing. It was our entrance, so to speak, upon the local stage, and Robin had decided it was a case where small economies ought not to be considered. Delivery stable proprietor had suggested a broom, but that would have necessitated one of us riding outside. I explained to Robin that in the country this was usual, and Robin had replied that much depended upon first impressions. Dick Wood, in all probability, claimed the place for himself, and the moment we were started stick a pipe in his mouth. She selected an open land-owl of quite an extraordinary size, painted yellow. It looked to me an object more appropriate to a Lord Mayor's show than to the requirements of a Christian family. But Robin assumed touchy on the subject, and I said no more. It certainly was roomy. Old gossip had turned it out well with a pair of greys, seventeen hands, I judged them. The only thing that seemed wrong was the coachman. I can't explain why, but he struck me as the class of youth one associates with a milk cart. We set out at a gentle trot. Veronica, who had been in trouble most of the morning, sat stiffly on the extreme edge of her seat, clothed in the attitude of one dead to the world. Dick, in lavender gloves that Robin had thoughtfully bought for him next to her. Ethel Bertha, Robin, and myself sat perched on the back seat. To have leaned back would have been to lie down. Ethel Bertha, having made up her mind, she was going to dislike the whole family of the St. Leonard's, seemed disinclined for conversation. Myself, I had forgotten my cigar case. I have tried the St. Leonard's cigar. He does not smoke himself, but keeps a box for his friends. He tells me he fancies men are smoking cigars less than formerly. I did not see how I was going to get a smoke for the next three hours. Nothing annoys me more than being bustled and made to forget things. Robina, who has recently changed her views on the subject of freckles, shared a parasol with her mother. They had to hold it almost horizontally in front of them, and this obscured their view. I could not myself understand why people smiled as we went by. Apart from the carriage, which they must have seen before, we were not, I should have said, an exhilarating spectacle. A party of cyclists laughed outright. Robina said there was one thing we should have to be careful about living in the country, and that was that the strong air and the loneliness combined didn't sap our intellect. She said she had noticed it, the tendency of country people to become prematurely silly. I did not share her fears, as I had by this time defined what it was that was amusing folks. Dick had discovered, behind the cushions, remnant of some recent wedding, one supposes, a large and tastefully bound book of common prayer. He and Veronica sat holding it between them, looking at their faces one could almost hear the organ peeling. Dick kept one eye on the parasol, and when, on passing into shade, it was lowered, he and Veronica were watching with rapt ecstasy the flight of swallows. Robina said she should tell Mr. Glassop of the insults to which respectable people were subject when riding in his carriage. She thought he ought to take steps to prevent it. She likewise suggested that the four of us, leaving the little mother in the carriage, should walk up the hill. Ethel Bertha said that she herself would like a walk. She had been balancing herself on the edge of a cushion with her feet dangling for two miles and was tired. She herself would have preferred a carriage made for ordinary sized people. Our coachman called attention to the heat of the afternoon and the length of the hill, and recommended our remaining where we were. But his advice was dismissed as exhibiting want of feeling. Robina is perhaps a trifle oversympathetic where animals are concerned. I remember when they were children, her banging dick over the head with the nursery bellows, because he would not agree to talk in a whisper for fear of waking the cat. You can, of course, overdo kindness to animals, but it is a fault on the right side, and as a rule I do not discourage her. Veronica was allowed to remain, owing to her bad knee. It is a most unfortunate affliction. It comes on quite suddenly. There is nothing to be seen, but the child's face, while she is suffering from it, would move a heart of stone. It had been troubling her, so it appeared all the morning, but she had said nothing, not wishing to alarm her mother. Ethel Bertha, who thinks it may be hereditary, she herself having had an aunt who had suffered from contracted ligament, fixed her up as comfortably as the pain would permit with cushions in the center of the back seat, and the rest of us toiled after the carriage. I should not like to say for certain that horses have a sense of humor, but I sometimes think they must. I had a horse years ago who used to take delight in teasing girls. I can describe it no other way. He would pick out a girl a quarter of a mile off, always some haughty, well-dressed girl who was feeling pleased with herself. As we approached he would eye her with horror and astonishment. There was two marks to escape notice. A hundred yards off he would be walking sideways, backing away from her. I would see the poor lady growing scarlet with the insult and annoyance of it. Opposite to her he would shy the entire width of the road and make pretense to bolt. Looking back I would see her vainly appealing to surrounding nature for a looking-glass to see what it was that had gone wrong with her. What is the matter with me? She would be crying to herself. That the very beasts of the field should shun me. Do they take me for a golly-wog? Halfway up the hill the offside gray turned his head and looked at us. We were about a couple of hundred yards behind. It was a hot and dusty day. He whispered to the near-side gray and the near-side gray turned and looked at us also. I knew what was coming. I've been played the same trick before. I shouted to the boy, but it was too late. They took the rest of the hill at a gallop and disappeared over the brow. Had there been an experienced coachman behind them, I should not have worried. Dick told his mother not to be alarmed and started off at fifteen miles an hour. I calculated I was doing about ten, which, for a gentleman past his first youth in a frock suit designed to disguise rather than give play to the figure, I consider creditable. Robina, undecided whether to go on ahead with Dick or remain to assist her mother, wasted vigor by running from one to the other. Ethelbertha's one hope was that she might reach the wreckage in time to receive Veronica's last wishes. It was in this order that we arrived at the St. Leonard's. Veronica, under an awning, sipping iced sherbet, appeared to be the center of the party. She was recounting her experiences with a modesty that had already won all hearts. The rest of us, she had explained, had preferred walking and would arrive later. She was evidently pleased to see me and volunteered the information that the grays to all seeming had enjoyed their gallop. I sent Dick back to break the good news to his mother. Young Butte said he would go, too. He said he was fresher than Dick would get there first. As a matter of history he did and was immediately sorry that he had. This is not a well-ordered world, or it would not be our good deeds that would so often get us into trouble. Robinah's insistence on our walking up the hill had been prompted by tender feeling for dumb animals, a virtuous emotion that surely the angels should have blessed. The result had been to bring down upon her suffering and reproach. It is not often that Ethelbertha loses her temper. When she does, she makes use of the occasion to perform what one might describe as a mental spring cleaning. All loose odds and ends of temper that may be lying about in her mind, any scrap of indignation that has been reposing peacefully, half forgotten in the corner of her brain, she ferrets out and brushes into the general heap. Small annoyances of the year before last, little things she hadn't noticed at the time, incidents in your past life that, so far as you are concerned, present themselves as dim visions connected maybe with some previous existence, she whisks triumphantly into her pan. The method has its advantages. It leaves her swept and garnished without a scrap of ill feeling towards any living soul. For quite a long period after one of these explosions, it is impossible to get across word out of her. One has to wait sometimes for months. But while the clearing up is in progress, the atmosphere around about is disturbing. The element of the whole thing is its comprehensive swiftness. Before they had reached the summit of the hill, Robina had acquired a tolerably complete idea of all she had done wrong since Christmas 12 month, the present afternoon's proceedings, including as they did the almost certain sacrificing of a sister to a violent death, together with the probable destruction of a father no longer of an age to trifle with apoplexy, being but a fit and proper complement to what had gone before. It would be long as Robina herself that evening bitterly declared before she would again give ear to the promptings of her better nature. To take next the sad case of Archibald Butte, his sole desire had been to relieve at the earliest moment possible the anxieties of a sister and a mother. Robina's new hat, not intended for sport, had broken away from its fastenings. With it it had brought down her hair. There is a harmless contrivance for building up the female hair, called, I am told, a pad. He can be made of comings, and then, of course, is literally the girl's own hair. He came upon Robina at the moment when, retracing her steps and with her back towards him, she was looking for it. With his usual luck he was the first to find it. Alpha Bertha thanked him for his information concerning Veronica, but seemed cheaply anxious to push on and convince herself that it was true. She took Dick's arm and left Robina to follow on with Butte. As I explained to him afterwards, had he stopped to ask my advice, I should have counseled his leaving the job to Dick, who, after all, was only thirty seconds behind him. As regarded himself, I should have suggested his taking a walk in the opposite direction, returning, say, in half an hour and pretending to have just arrived. By that time Robina, with the assistance of Janie's brush and comb and possibly her powder puff, would have been feeling herself again. He could have listened sympathetically to an account of the affair from Robina herself, her version in which she would have appeared to advantage. Give her time, and she has a sense of humor. She would have made it bright and whimsical. Without asserting it in so many words, she would have conveyed the impression, I know her way, that she alone throughout the whole commotion had remained calm and helpful. Dear old Dick, and poor dear Papa, I can hear her saying it, would have supplied the low comedy, and Veronica alluded to with affection free from sentimentality, would have furnished the dramatic interest. It is not that Robina intends to mislead, but she has the artistic instinct. It would have made quite a charming story. Robina, always the central figure. She would have enjoyed telling it, and would have been pleased with the person listening. All this, which would have been the reward of subterfuge he had missed. Virtuous intention had gained for him nothing but a few scattered observations from Robina concerning himself. The probable object of his creator in fashioning him, his relation to the scheme of things in general, observations all of which he had felt to be unjust. We compared experiences over a pipe that same evening, and he told me of a friend of his, a law student, who had shared diggings with him in Edinburgh. A kinder-hearted young man butte felt sure he could never have breathed, nor one with a tenderer or more chivalrous regard for women. In the misery this brought him to say nothing of the irritation caused to quite a number of respectable people could hardly be imagined, so young Butte assured me, by anyone not personally equated with the parties, it was the plain and snappy girl and the less attractive type of old maid for whom he felt the most sorrow. He could not help thinking of all they had missed and were likely to go on missing. The rapture, surely the woman's birthright, of feeling herself adored anyhow once in her life. The delight of seeing the lover's eye light up at her coming. Had he been a Mormon he would have married them all. They too, the neglected that none had invited to the feast of love, they also should know the joys of home, feel the sweet comfort of a husband's arm. Being a Christian his power for good was limited, but at least he could lift from them the despairing conviction that they were outside the pale of masculine affection. Not one of them so far as he could help it, but should be able to say, I, even I, had a lover once. No, dear, we never married. It was one of those spiritual loves. Formal engagement with a ring would have spoiled it, coarsened it. No, it was just a beautiful thing that came into my life and passed away again, leaving behind it a fragrance that has sweetened all my days. That is how he imagined they would talk about it years afterwards to the little niece or nephew asking artless questions how they would feel about it themselves. Whether law circles are peculiarly rich in unattractive spinsters or whether it merely happened to be an exceptional season for them, but could not say, but certain it was that the number of sour-faced girls and fretful old maids in excess of the demand seemed to be greater than usual that winter in Edinburgh, with the result that young hat-good had a busy time of it. He made love to them, not obtrusively, which might have led them open to ridicule. Many of them were old enough to have been his mother, but more by insinuation, by subtle suggestion. His feelings, so they gathered, were too deep for words, but the adoring eyes with which he would follow their every movement, the rapt ecstasy with which he would drink in their lightest remark about the weather, the tone of almost reverential awe with which he would inquire of them concerning their lesser ailments, all conveyed to their sympathetic observation the message that he dared not tell. He had no favourites. Sufficient it was that a woman should be unpleasant for him to pour out at her feet the simulated passion of a lifetime. He sent them presents, nothing expensive, wrapped in pleasing pretense of anonymity. Valentine's carefully selected for their compromising character. One charity headed old maid with warts he had kissed upon the brow. All this he did out of his great pity for them. It was a beautiful idea, but it worked badly. They did not understand. Never got the hang of the thing, not one of them. They thought he was really gone on them. For a time, his elusiveness, his backwardness in coming to the point, they attributed to a fit and proper fear of his fate. But as the months went by, the feeling of each one was that he was carrying the apprehension of his own unworthiness too far. They gave him encouragement, provided for him openings, till the wonder grew upon them how any woman ever did get married. At the end of their resources they consulted bosom friends. In several instances the bosom friend turned out to be the bosom friend of more than one of them. The bosom friends began to take a hand in it. Some of them came to him with quite a little list, insisting, playfully at first, on his making up his mind what he was going to take and what he was going to leave, offering, as reward for prompt decision, to make things as easy for him as possible with the remainder of the column. It was then he saw that his good intentions were likely to end in catastrophe. He would not tell the truth that the whole scheme had been conceived out of charity toward all ill-constructed or dilapidated ladies. That personally he didn't care a hang for any of them, had only taken them on, boldly speaking, to give them a treat, and because nobody else would. That wasn't going to be a golden memory coloring their otherwise drab existence. He explained that it was not love, not the love that alone would justify a man's asking of a woman that she should give herself to him for life, that he felt and always should feel for them, but merely admiration and deep esteem. Then seventeen of them thought that would be sufficient to start with and offered to chance the rest. The truth had to come out. Friends who knew his noble nature could not sit by and hear him denounced as a heartless and eccentric profligate. Ladies whose beauty and popularity were beyond dispute thought it a touching and tender thing for him to have done, but every woman to whom he had ever addressed a kind word wanted to wring his neck. He did the most sensible thing he could, under all the circumstances, changed his address to Aberdeen, where he had an aunt living. But the story followed him. No woman would be seen speaking to him. One admiring glance from Hapgood would send the prettiest girls home weeping to their mothers. Later on he fell in love, hopelessly madly in love, but he dared not tell her, dared not let a living soul guess it. That was the only way he could show it. It is not sufficient in this world to want to do good. There's got to be a knack about it. There was a man I met in Colorado one Christmas time. I was on a lecturing tour. His idea was to send a loving greeting to his wife in New York. He had been married nineteen years, and this was the first time he had been separated from his family on Christmas Day. He pictured them round the table in the little faraway New England parlor, his wife, his sister-in-law, Uncle Silas, cousin Jane, Jack and Willie, and golden-haired Lena. They would be just sitting down to dinner, talking about him most likely, wishing he were among them. They were a nice family and all fond of him. What joy it would give them to know that he was safe and sound to hear the very tones of his loved voice speaking to them. Modern science has made possible these miracles. True, the long-distance telephone would cost him five dollars, but what is five dollars weighed against the privilege of wopting happiness to an entire family on Christmas Day. We had just come back from a walk. He slammed the money down and laughed aloud at the thought of the surprise he was about to give them all. The telephone bell rang out clear and distinct at the precise moment when his wife, with knife and fork in hand, was preparing to carve the turkey. She was a nervous lady, and twice that we could dream that she had seen her husband without being able to get to him. On the first occasion she had seen him enter a dry goods store in Broadway, and hastening across the road had followed him in. He was hardly a dozen yards in front of her, but before she could overtake him all the young lady assistants had rushed from behind their counters, and forming a circle round her had refused to let her pass, which in her dream had irritated her considerably. On the next occasion he had boarded a Brooklyn car in which she was returning home. She had tried to attract his attention with her umbrella, but he did not seem to see her, and every time she rose to go across to him the car gave a jerk and bumped her back into her seat. When she did get over to him it was not her husband at all, but the gentleman out of the Quaker Oats advertisement. She went to the telephone, feeling, as she said herself afterwards, all of a tremble, that you could speak from Colorado to New York. She would not then have believed, had you told her. The thing was in its early stages, which may also have accounted for the voice reaching her strange and broken. I was standing beside him while he spoke. We were in the vestibule of the Savoy Hotel at Colorado Springs. It was five o'clock in the afternoon, which would be about seven in New York. He told her he was safe and well, and that she was not to fret about him. He told her he had been that morning for a walk in the Garden of the Gods, which is the name given to the local park. They do that sort of thing in Colorado. Also, that he had drunk from the Solitial Springs abounding in that favored land. I am not sure that Solitial was the correct word. He was not sure himself, added to which he pronounced it badly. Whatever they were he assured her they had done him good. He sent a special message to his cousin Jane, a maiden lady of means, to the effect that she could rely upon seeing him soon. She was a touchy old lady, and liked to be singled out for special attention. He made the usual kind inquiries about everybody, sent them all his blessing, and only wished they could be with him in this delectable land where it seemed to be always sunshine and balmy breezes. He could have said more, but his time being up the telephone people switched him off, and feeling he had done a good and thoughtful deed, he suggested a game of billiards. Could he have been a witness of events at the other end of the wire, his condition would have been one of less self-complacence. Long before the end of the first sentence, his wife had come to the conclusion that this was a message from the dead. Why through a telephone did not greatly worry her, it seemed as reasonable a medium as any other she had ever heard of, indeed a trifle more so. Later, when she was able to review the matter calmly, it afforded her some consolation to reflect that things might have been worse. That garden, together with the Solitial Springs, which she took to be celestial, there was not much difference the way he pronounced it, was distinctly reassuring. The eternal sunshine and the balmy breezes likewise agreed with her knowledge of heavenly topography as derived from the congregational hymn book, that he should have needed to inquire concerning the health of herself and the children had puzzled her. The only explanation was that they didn't know everything, not even up there, maybe, not the newcomers. She had answered as coherently as her state of distraction would permit, and had then dropped limply to the floor. It was the sound of her falling against the umbrella stand and upsetting it that brought them all trooping out from the dining room. It took her some time to get the thing home to them, and when she had finished, her brother Silas, acting on the impulse of the moment, rang up the exchange with some vague idea of getting into communication with St. Peter and obtaining further particulars, but recollected himself in time to explain to the halloa girl that he had made a mistake. The eldest boy, a practical youth, pointed out very sensibly that nothing could be gained by their not going on with their dinner, but was bitterly reproached for being able to think of any form of enjoyment at a moment when his poor dear father was in heaven. He reminded his mother of the special message to Cousin Jane, who up to that moment had been playing the part of Comforter. With the collapse of Cousin Jane, dramatic in its suddenness, conversation disappeared. At nine o'clock, the entire family went dinnerless to bed. The eldest boy, as I have said, a practical youth, had the sense to get up early the next morning and send a wire which brought the glad news back to them that their beloved one was not in heaven, but was still in Colorado. But the only reward my friend got for all his tender thoughtfulness was the vehement injunction never for the remainder of his life to play such a fool's trick again. There were other cases I could have recited showing the ill recompense that so often overtakes the virtuous action, but, as I explained to Butte, it would have saddened me to dwell upon the theme. It was quite a large party assembled at the St. Leonard's, including one or two county people, and I should have liked myself to have made a better entrance. A large lady with a very small voice seemed to be under the impression that I had arranged the whole business on purpose. She said it was so dramatic. One good thing came out of it. Janey, in her quiet, quick way, sought to what the Elphalbertha and Robin had slipped into the house unnoticed by one of them. When they joined the other guests half an hour later, they had had a cup of tea and a rest and were feeling calm and cool, with their hair nicely done, and Elphalbertha remarked to Robin on the way home, what a comfort it must be to Mrs. St. Leonard to have a daughter so capable, one who knew just the right thing to do and did it without making a fuss and a disturbance. Everyone was very nice. Of course, we made the usual mistake. They talked to me about books and plays, and I gave them my views on any of them. They talked about agriculture and cub hunting. I'm not quite sure what fool it was who described a boar as a man who talked about himself. As a matter of fact, it is the only subject the average man knows sufficiently well to make interesting. There's a man I know. He makes a fortune out of a patent food for infants. He began life as a dairy farmer and hit upon it quite by accident. When he talks about the humors of company promoting and the tricks of the advertising agent, he is amusing. I have sat at his table when he was a bachelor and listened to him by the hour with enjoyment. The mistake he made was marrying a broad-minded, cultured woman who ruined him, conversationally, I mean. He is now well-informed and tiresome on most topics. That is why actors and actresses are always such delightful company. They are not ashamed to talk about themselves. I remember a dinner party once. Our host was one of the best-known baristers in London. A famous lady novelist sat on his right, and a scientist of worldwide reputation had the place of honor next to our hostess, who herself had written a history of the struggle for nationality in South America that serves as an authority to all the foreign offices in Europe. Among the remaining guests were a bishop, the editor-in-chief of a London Daily newspaper, a man who knew the interior of China as well as most men know their own club, a Russian revolutionist just escaped from Siberia, a leading dramatist, a cabinet minister, and a poet whose name is a household word wherever the English tongue is spoken. And for two hours we sat and listened to a wicked-looking little woman who from the boards of a bowery music hall had worked her way up to the position of a star in musical comedy. Education, as she observed herself without regret, had not been compulsory throughout the waterside district of Chicago in her young days, and compelled to earn her own living from the age of 13, the opportunity for supplying the original deficiency had been wanting. But she knew her subject, which was herself, her experiences, her reminiscences, and bad sense enough to stick to it. Until the moment when she took the liberty of chipping in to use her own expression, the amount of twaddle talked had been appalling. The bishop had told us all he had learned about China during a visit to San Francisco, while the man who had spent the last 20 years of his life in the country was busy explaining his views on the subject of the English drama. Our hostess had been endeavoring to make the scientists feel at home by talking to him about radium. The dramatist had explained at some length his views of the crisis in Russia. The poet had quite spoiled his dinner trying to suggest to the cabinet minister new sources of taxation. The Russian revolutionist had told us what ought to have been a funny story about a duck, and the lady novelist and the cabinet minister had discussed Christian science for a quarter of an hour, each under the mistaken impression that the other one was a believer in it. The editor had been explaining the attitude of the church towards the new theology, and our host, one of the wittiest men at the bar, had been talking cheaply to the butler. The relief of listening to anybody talking about something they knew was like finding a matchbox to a man who has been barking his shins in the dark for the rest of the dinner we cloned to her. I could have made myself quite interesting to these good squires and farmers talking to them about theaters and the literary celebrities I have met, and they could have told me dog stories and given me useful information as to the working of the Small Holdings Act. They said some very charming things about my books, mostly to the effect that they read and enjoyed them when feeling ill or suffering from mental collapse. I gathered that had they always continued in a healthy state of mind and body, it would not have occurred to them to read me. One man assured me I had saved his life. It was his brain, he told me. He had been so upset by something that had happened to him that he had almost lost his reason. There were times when he could not even remember his own name. His mind seemed an absolute blank. And then, one day by chance, or providence, or whatever you choose to call it, he had taken up a book of mine. It was the only thing he had been able to read for months and months. And now, whenever he felt himself run down, his brain, like a squeezed orange, that was his simile. He would put everything else aside and read a book of mine, anyone. It didn't matter which. I suppose one ought to be glad that one has saved somebody's life, but I should like to have the choosing of them myself. I am not sure that Ethel Bertha is going to like Mrs. St. Leonard, and I don't think Mrs. St. Leonard will much like Ethel Bertha. I have gathered that Mrs. St. Leonard doesn't like anybody much, except, of course, when it is her duty. She does not seem to have the time. Man is born to trouble, and it is not bad philosophy to get oneself accustomed to the feeling. But Mrs. St. Leonard has given herself up to the pursuit of trouble to the exclusion of all other interests in life. She appears to regard it as the only calling worthy of Christian woman. I found her alone one afternoon. Her manner was preoccupied. I asked if I could be of any assistance. No, she answered. I am merely trying to think what it can be that has been worrying me all the morning. It is clean gone out of my head. She remembered it a little later with a glad sigh. St. Leonard himself Ethel Bertha thinks charming. We are to go again on Sunday for her to see the children. Three or four people we met I fancy we shall be able to fit in with. We left at half past six and took Butte back with us to supper. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Of They and I by Jerome K. Jerome This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Deborah Lynn. They and I by Jerome K. Jerome. Chapter 10 She is a good woman, said Robina. Who is a good woman, I asked. He is trying, I expect, although he is an old deer. To live with, I mean, continued Robina, addressing apparently the rising moon. And then there are all those children. You were thinking of Mrs. St. Leonard, I suggested? There seems no way of making her happy, explained Robina. On Thursday I went round early in the morning to help Janie pack the baskets for the picnic. It was her own idea, the picnic. Speaking of picnics, I said, you might have thought, went on Robina, that she was dressing for her own funeral. She said she knew she was going to catch her death of cold sitting on the wet grass. Something told her. I reminded her it hadn't rained for three weeks and that everything was as dry as a bone. But she said that made no difference to grass. There was always a moisture in grass and that cushions and all that only helped draw it out. Not that it mattered. The end had to come and so long as the others were happy, you know her style. Nobody ever thought of her. She was to be dragged here, dragged there. She talked about herself as if she were some sacred image. It got upon my nerves at last so that I persuaded Janie to let me offer to stop at home with her. I wasn't too keen about going myself, not by that time. When our desires leave us, says Roshfa called, I remarked, we pride ourselves upon our virtue in having overcome them. While it was her fault, anyhow, retorted Robina and I didn't make a virtue of it. I told her I'd just as soon not go and that I felt sure the others would be all right without her so that there was no need for her to be dragged anywhere. And then she burst into tears. She said, I suggested, that it was hard on her to have children who could wish to go to a picnic and leave their mother at home, that it was little enough enjoyment she had in her life, heaven knows, that if there was one thing she had been looking forward to, it was this day's outing. But still, of course, if everybody would be happier without her, something of the sort, admitted Robina, only there was a lot of it. We had to all fuss around her and swear that without her, it wouldn't be worth calling a picnic. She brightened up on the way home. The screech owl in the yew tree emitted a blood-curling scream. He perches there each evening on the extreme end of the longest bow. Dimly outlined against the night, he has the appearance of a friendly hobgoblin, but I wish he didn't fancy himself as a vocalist. It is against his own interests, I am sure, if he only knew it. That American college yell of his must have the effect of sending every living thing within half a mile back into its hole. Maybe it is a provision of nature for clearing off the very old mice who have become stone-depth and would otherwise be a burden on their relatives. The others, unless out for suicide, must, one thinks, be tolerably safe. Ethel Bertha is persuaded he is a sign of death, but seeing there isn't a square quarter of a mile in this county without its screech owl, there can hardly by this time be a resident that an assurance society would look at. Veronica likes him. She even likes his screech. I found her under the tree the other night, wrapped up in a shawl, trying to learn it, as if one of them were not enough. It may be quite cross with her. Besides, it wasn't a bit like it, as I told her. She said it was better than I could do, anyhow, and I was idiot enough to take up the challenge. It makes me angry now, when I think of it, a respectable middle-aged literary man standing under a yew tree, trying to screech like an owl. And the bird was silly enough to encourage us. She was a charming girl, I said, seven and twenty years ago, when St. Leonard fell in love with her. She had those dark, dreamy eyes, so suggestive of veiled mysteries, and her lips must have looked bewitching when they pouted. I expect they often did. They do so still, but the pout of a woman of forty-six no longer fascinates. To a pretty girl of nineteen, a spice of temper, in illogical unreasonable-ness, are added attractions. The scratch of a blue-eyed kitten only tempts us to tease her the more. Young Hubert St. Leonard, he had curly brown hair with a pretty trick of blushing and was going to conquer the world, found her fretfulness, her very selfishness adorable, and told her so, kneeling before her, gazing into her bewildering eyes. Only he called it her waywardness, her imperiousness, begged her for his sake to be more capricious, told her how beautiful she looked when displeased. So, no doubt, she did, at nineteen. He didn't tell you all that, did he? demanded Robina. Not a word, I reassured her, except that she was acknowledged by all authorities to have been the most beautiful girl in Tundridge Wells and that her father had been ruined by a rascally solicitor. No, I was merely to use the phrase of the French police courts reconstructing the crime. It may be all wrong, grumbled Robina. It may be, I agreed, but why? Does it strike you as improbable? We were sitting in the porch waiting for Dick to come by the white path across the field. No, answered Robina, it all sounds very probable. I wish it didn't. You must remember, I continued, that I am an old playgoer. I have set out so many of this world's dramas, it is as easy to reconstruct them backwards as forwards. We are witnessing the last act of the St. Leonard drama, that unsatisfactory last act that merely fills out time after the play has ended. The intermediate acts were probably more exciting, containing passionate scenes played with much earnestness, chiefly for the amusement of the servants. But the first act with the kentish lanes and the woods for a backcloth must have been charming. Here was the devout lover she had heard of, dreamed of. It is delightful to be regarded as perfection. Not absolute perfection, for that might put a strain upon us to live up to. But it is so near perfection that to be more perfect would just spoil it. The spots upon us that unappreciative friends and relations would magnify into blemishes, seen in their true light, artistic shading, relieving a faultlessness that might otherwise prove too glaring. Dear Hubert found her excellent, just as she was in every detail. It would have been a crime against love for her to seek to change herself. Well, then it was his fault, argued Robbena, if he was silly enough to like her faults and encourage her in them. What could he have done? I asked, even if he had seen them. The lover does not point out his mistress's shortcomings to her. Much the more sensible plan if he did, insisted Robbena. Then if she cared for him, she could set to work to cure herself. You would like it, I said. You would appreciate it in your own case. Can you imagine young Butte? Why young Butte? demanded Robbena. What's he got to do with it? Nothing, I answered, except that he happens to be the first male creature you have ever come across since you were six that you haven't flirted with. I don't flirt with them, said Robbena. I merely try to be nice to them. With the exception of young Butte, I persisted. He irritates me, Robbena explained. I was reading, I said, the other day an account of the marriage customs prevailing among the lower Caucasians. The lover takes his stand beneath his lady's window, and having attracted her attention proceeds to sing. And if she seems to like it, if she listens to it without getting mad, that means she doesn't want him. But if she gets upset about it, slams down the window and walks away, then it's all right. I think it's the lower Caucasians. Must be a very silly people, said Robbena. I suppose a pail of water would be the highest proof of her affection he could hope for. A complex being, man, I agreed. We will call him X. Can you imagine young X coming to you and saying, my dear Robbena, you have many excellent qualities. You can be amiable, so long as you are having your own way and everything, but thwarted, you can be just horrid. You are very kind to those who are willing for you to be kind to them in your own way, which is not always their way. You can be quite unselfish when you happen to be in an unselfish mood, which is far from frequent. You are capable and clever, but like most capable and clever people, impatient and domineering, highly energetic when not feeling lazy, ready to forgive the moment your temper is exhausted. You are generous and frank, but if your object could only be gained through meanness or deceit, you would not hesitate a moment longer than was necessary to convince yourself that the circumstances justified the means. You are sympathetic, tender-hearted, and have a fine sense of justice, but I can see that tongue of yours if not carefully watched, wearing decidedly shrewish. You have any amount of grit. A man might go tiger hunting with you, with no one better, but you are obstinate, conceited, and exacting. In short, to sum you up, you have all the makings and you have an ideal wife combined with fault sufficient to make a Socrates regret he'd ever married you. Yes, I would, said Robinus, bringing to her feet. I could not see her face, but I knew there was the look upon it that made Primgate want to paint her as Joan of Arc. Only it would never stop long enough. I'd love him for talking like that, and I'd respect him. If he was that sort of man, I'd pray God to help me to be the sort of woman he wanted me to be. I'd try. I'd try all day long. I would. I wonder, I said. Robinus had surprised me. I admit it. I thought I knew the sex better. Any girl would, said Robinus. He'd be worth it. It would be a new idea, I'm used. God damn him all. What a new world might it not create. The fancy began to take hold of me. Love no longer blind. Love refusing any more to be the poor blind fool, sport of gods and men. Love no longer passion slave. His bonds broken, the senseless bandage flung aside. Love helping life instead of muddling it. Marriage, the foundation of civilization. No longer reared upon the sands of lies and illusions, but grappled to the rock of truth, reality. Have you ever read Tom Jones, I said? No, answered Robinus. I've always heard it wasn't a nice book. It isn't, I said. Man isn't a nice animal, not all of him. Nor woman either. There's a deal of the beast in man. What can you expect? Till a few paltry thousands of years ago he was a beast fighting with other beasts. His fellow denizens of the woods and caves watching for his prey, crouched in the long grass of the river's bank, tearing it with claws and teeth, growling as he ate. So he lived and died through the dim unnamed ages, transmitting his beast's blood, his bestial instincts to his offspring, growing ever stronger, fiercer, from generation to generation, while the rocks piled up their strata and the oceans shaped their beds. Moses, while Lord Rothschild's great grandfather, a few score times removed, must have known Moses, talked with them. Babylon, it is a modern city, fallen into disuse for the moment, owing to alteration of traffic routes. History, it is a tale of today. Man was crawling about the world on all fours, learning to be an animal for millions of years before the secret of his birth was whispered to him. It is only during the last few centuries that he has been trying to be a man, or modern morality. While I compared with the teachings of nature, it is but a few days old. What do you expect? That he shall forget the lessons of the eons at the bidding of the hours? Then you advise me to read Tom Jones? said Robina. Yes, I said I do. I should not, if I thought you were still a child, knowing only blind trust or blind terror. The sun is not extinguished because occasionally obscured by mist. The scent of the rose is not dead because of the worm and the leaf. A healthy rose can afford a few worms, has got to, anyhow. Oh, man are not Tom Joneses. The standard of masculine behavior continues to go up. Many of us make fine efforts to conform to it, and some of us succeed. But the Tom Joneses there in all of us who are not anemic or consumptive, and there's no sense at all in getting cross with us about it because we cannot help it. We are doing our best. In another hundred thousand years or so, provided all goes well, we shall be the perfect man. And seeing our early training, I flatter myself that up to the present we have done remarkably well. Nothing like being satisfied with oneself, said Robina. I'm not satisfied. I said I'm only hopeful. But it irritates me when I hear people talk as though man had been born a white, sold angel and was making supernatural efforts to become a sinner. That seems to me the way to discourage him. What he wants is bucking up. Somebody to say to him, Bravo, why this is splendid. Just think, my boy, what you were, and that not so very long ago, an unwashed hairy savage. Your law, that of the jungle, your morals, those of the rabbit, Lauren. Now look at yourself, dressed in your little shiny hat, your trousers neatly creased, walking with your wife to church on Sunday. Keep on, that's all you've got to do. In a few more centuries, your own mother nature won't know you. You women, I continued, by a handful of years ago, we bought and sold you, kept you in cages, took the stick to you when you were not spying and doing what you were told. Did you ever read the history of patient Griselda? Yes, said Robina, I have. I gathered from her tone that the Joan of Arc expression had departed. Had Primgate wanted to paint her at that particular moment, I should have suggested Catherine during the earlier stages, listening to a curtain lecture from Petrucio. Are you suggesting that all women should take her for a model? No, I said I'm not. Though were we living in Chaucer's time, I might, and you would not think it even silly. What I'm impressing upon you is that the human race has yet a little way to travel before the average man can be regarded as an up-to-date addition of King Arthur. The King Arthur of the poetical legend, I mean. Don't be too impatient with him. Thinking what a beast he has been ought to make him impatient himself with himself, considered Robina. He ought to be feeling so ashamed of himself as to be willing to do anything. The owl in the old you screamed, whether with indignation or amusement, I cannot tell. And woman, I said, had the power been hers, would she have used it to sweeter purpose? Where is your evidence? Your Cleopatra's, Pompadour's, Jezebel's, your Catherine's of Russia, late empresses of China, your Faustines of all ages, and all climes, your Mother Brown Wigs, your Lucretia Borgia's, Salamese, I could wear you with names, your Roman Taskmistresses, your Drivers of Lodginghouse Slavies, your ladies who whipped their pages to death in the Middle Ages, your modern dames of fashion, decked with the plumage of the tortured grove. There have been other women also, noble women, their names like beacon lights, studying the dark waste of history. So there have been noble men, saints, martyrs, heroes, the sex line divides us physically, not morally. Woman has been man's accomplice in too many crimes to claim to be his judge. Male and female created he them, like and like for good and evil. By good fortune I found a loose match. I lighted a fresh cigar. Dick, I suppose, is the average man, said Rabbana. Most of us are, I said, when we are at home. Carlisle was the average man in the little front parlor in Cheney Row. Though to hear folks talk, you might think no married couple outside literary circles had ever been known to exchange a cross. Look. So was Oliver Cromwell in his own palace with the door shut. Mrs. Cromwell must have thought him monstrous silly, placing sticky sweetmeats for his guests to sit on. Told him so most likely. A cheery, kindly man, notwithstanding though given to moods. He and Mrs. Cromwell seem to have rubbed along on the whole pretty well together. Old Sam Johnson, great, god-fearing, lovable, cantankerous old brute. Life with him in a small house on a limited income must have had its ups and downs. Milton and Frederick the Great were, one hopes, a little below the average. Did their best, no doubt. Lacked understanding, not so easy as it looks, living up to the standard of the average man. Very clever people, in particular, find it tiring. I shall never marry, said Robina. At least I hope I shan't. Why hope, I asked. Because I hope I shall never be idiot enough, she answered. I see it all so clearly. I wish I didn't. Love. It's only an ugly thing, with a pretty name. It will not be me that he will fall in love with. He will not know me until it is too late. How can he? It will be merely with the outside of me, my pink and white skin, my rounded arms. I feel it sometimes when I see men looking at me, and it makes me mad. And at other times the admiration in their eyes pleases me, and that makes me madder still. The moon had slipped behind the wood. She had risen, and leaning against the porch was standing with her hands clasped. I fancy she had forgotten me. She seemed to be talking to the night. It's only a trick of nature to make fools of us, she said. He will tell me I am all the world to him that his love will outlive the stars, will believe it himself at the time, poor fellow. He will call me a hundred pretty names, will kiss my feet and hands, and if I'm fooling up to listen to him, it may last, she laughed. It was rather an ugly laugh. Six months, with luck perhaps a year, if I'm careful not to go out in the east wind and come home with a red nose, then never let him catch me in curlpapers. It will not be me that he will want, only my youth and the novelty of me, and the mystery, and when that is gone. She turned to me. It was a strange face I saw then in the pale light, quite a fierce little face. She laid her hands upon my shoulders, and I felt them cold. What comes when it is dead, she said. What follows? You must know. Tell me, I want the truth. Her vehemence had arisen so suddenly, the little girl I had set out to talk with was no longer there. To my bewilderment it was a woman that was questioning me. I drew her down beside me, but the childish face was still stern. I want the truth, she said, so that I answered very gravely. When the passion is past, when the glory and the wonder of desire, nature's eternal ritual of marriage, solemnizing, sanctifying it to her commands, is ended, when, sooner or later, some gray dawn finds you wandering, bewildered in once familiar places, seeking vainly the lost palace of youth's dreams. When love's frenzy is faded, like the fragrance of the blossom, like the splendor of the dawn, there will remain to you just what was there before, no more, no less. If passion was all you had to give to one another, God help you. You have had your hour of madness. It is finished. If greed of praise and worship was your price, while you have had your payment, the bargain is complete. If mere hope to be made happy was your lure, one pities you. We do not make each other happy. Happiness is the gift of the gods, not of man. The secret lies within you, not without. What remains to you will depend not upon what you thought, but upon what you are. If behind the lover there was the man, behind the impossible goddess of his lovesick brain, some honest human woman, then life lies not behind you, but before you. Life is giving, not getting. That is the mistake we most of us set out with. It is the work that is the joy, not the wages, the game, not the score, the lover's delight is to yield, not to claim. The crown of motherhood is pain. To serve the state at cost of ease and leisure, to spend his thought and labor upon a hundred schemes is the man's ambition. Life is doing, not having. It is to gain the peak the climber strives, not to possess it. Fools marry, thinking what they are going to get out of it. Good store of joys and pleasure, opportunities for self-indulgence, eternal soft caresses, the wages of the wanton. The rewards of marriage are toil, duty, responsibility, manhood, womanhood. Love's baby talk you will have outgrown. You will no longer be his goddess, angel, popsy-wopsy, queen of his heart. There are finer names than these. Wife, mother, priestess in the temple of humanity. Marriage is renunciation, the sacrifice of self upon the altar of the race. A trick of nature you call it, perhaps. But a trick of nature compelling you to surrender yourself to the purposes of God. A fancy we must have said in silence for quite a long while. For the moon creeping upward past the wood had flooded the fields again with light before Robiness spoke. Then all love is needless, she said. We could do better without it. Choose with more discretion. If it is only something that worries us for a little while and then passes, what is the sense of it? You could ask the same question of life itself, I said. Something that worries us for a little while then passes. Perhaps the worry, as you call it, has its uses. Volcanic upheavals are necessary to the making of a world. Without them the ground would remain rockbound, unfitted for its purposes. That explosion of youth's pent-up forces that we term love serves to the making of man and woman. It does not die, it takes new shape. The blossom fades as the fruit forms. The passion passes to give place to peace. The trembling lover has become the helper, the comforter, the husband. But the failures, Robiness persisted. I do not mean the silly or the wicked people, but the people who begin by really loving one another only to end in disliking, almost hating one another. How did they get there? Sit down, I said, and I will tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a girl and a boy who loved her. She was a clever, brilliant girl, and she had the face of an angel. They lived near to one another, seeing each other almost daily. But the boy, awed by the difference of their social position, kept his secret as he thought to himself, dreaming as youth will of the day when fame and wealth would bridge the gulf between them. The kind look in her eyes, the occasional seeming pressure of her hand, he allowed to feed his hopes. And on the morning of his departure for London an incident occurred that changed his vague imaginings to set resolve. He had sent on his scanty baggage by the carrier, intending to walk the three miles to the station. It was early in the morning, and he had not expected to meet a soul. But a mile from the village he overtook her. She was reading a book, but she made no pretense that the meeting was accidental, leaving him to form what conclusions he would. She walked with him some distance, and he told her of his plans and hopes, and she answered him quite simply that she should always remember him, always be more glad than she could tell to hear of his success. Near the end of the lane they parted, she wishing him in that low, sweet woman's voice of hers all things good. He turned a little farther on and found that she had also turned. She waved her hand to him, smiling, and through the long day's journey and through many days to come, there remained with him that picture of her, bringing with it the scent of the pine woods, her white hand waving to him, her sweet eyes smiling wistfully. But fame and fortune are not one so quickly as boys dream, nor is life as easy to live bravely as it looks in visions. It was nearly twenty years before they met again. Neither had married. Her people were dead and she was living alone, and to him the world at last had opened her doors. She was still beautiful, a gracious, gentle lady she had grown, clothed with that soft, sweet dignity the time bestows upon rare women, rendering them fairer with the years. To the man it seemed a miracle. The dream of those early days came back to him. Surely there was nothing now to separate them. Nothing had changed but the years, bringing to them both wider sympathies calmer, more enduring emotions. She welcomed him again with the old kind smile, a warmer pressure of the hand, and allowing a little time to pass for courtesy's sake, he told her what was the truth, that he had never ceased to love her, never ceased to keep the vision of her fair pure face before him, his ideal of all that man could find of help in womanhood. And her answer, until years later, he read the explanation, remained a mystery to him. She told him that she loved him, that she had never loved any other man and never should, that his love, for so long as he chose to give it to her, she should always prize as the greatest gift of her life. But with that she prayed him to remain content. He thought, perhaps, it was a touch of woman's pride of her dignity that he had kept silent so long, not trusting her, that perhaps as time went by she would change her mind, but she never did. And after a while, finding that his persistence only pained her, he accepted the situation. She was not the type of woman about whom people talk scandal, nor would it have troubled her much had they done so. Abel now, to work where he would, he took a house in a neighboring village, where, for the best part of the year, he lived near to her. And to the end they remained lovers. I think I understand, said Robina. I will tell you afterwards if I am wrong. I told the story to a woman many years ago, I said, and she also thought she understood, but she was only half right. We will see, said Robina, go on. She left a letter to be given to him after her death in case he survived her, if not to be burned unopened. In it she told him her reason, or rather her reasons for having refused him. It was an odd letter. The reasons sounded so pitiably insufficient, until one took the pains to examine them in the cold light of experience, and then her letter struck one not as foolish, but as one of the grimest commentaries upon marriage that perhaps had ever been penned. It was because she had wished always to remain his ideal, to keep their love for one another to be end untarnished, to be his true help-meet in all things that she had refused to marry him. Had he spoken that morning, she had waited for him in the lane. She had half hoped, half feared it. She might have given her promise. For youth, so she wrote, always dreams it can find a new way. She thanked God that he had not. Sooner or later, so ran the letter, you would have learned, dear, that I was neither saint nor angel, but just a woman, such a tiresome inconsistent creature, she would have exasperated you, full of a thousand follies and irritabilities that would have marred for you all that was good in her. I wanted you to have of me only what was worthy, and this seemed the only way. Counting the hours to your coming, hating the pain of your going, I could always give to you my best. The ugly words, the whims and frets that poisoned speech, they could wait. It was my lover's hour. And you, dear, were always so tender, so gay. You brought me joy with both your hands. Would it have been the same had you been my husband? How could it? There were times, even as it was, when you vexed me. Forgive me, dear, I mean it was my fault, ways of thought and action that did not fit in with my ways, that I was not large-minded enough to pass over. As my lover, they were but a spot upon the sun. It was easy to control the momentary irritation that they caused me. Time was too precious for even a moment of estrangement. As my husband, the jarring note would have been continuous, would have widened into discord. You see, dear, I was not great enough to love all of you. I remember as a child how indignant I always felt with God when my nurse told me he would not love me because I was naughty, that he only loved good children. It seemed such a poor sort of love that. Yet that is precisely how we men and women do love, taking only what gives us pleasure, repaying the rest with anger. There would have arisen the unkind words that can never be recalled, the ugly silences, the gradual withdrawing from one another. I dared not face it. It was not all selfishness. Truthfully, I can say I thought more of you than of myself. I wanted to keep the shadows of life away from you. Women and women are like the flowers. It is in sunshine that we come to our best. You were my hero. I wanted you to be great. I wanted you to be surrounded by lovely dreams. I wanted your love to be a thing holy, helpful to you. It was a long letter. I have given you the gist of it. Again there was a silence between us. You think she did right? asked Robina. I cannot say, I answered. There are no rules for life, only for the individual. I have read it somewhere, said Robina. Where was it? Love suffers all things and rejoices. Maybe an old Thomas Kempis. I am not sure, I said. It seems to me, said Robina, that the explanation lies in that one sentence of hers. I was not great enough to love all of you. It seems to me, I said, that the whole art of marriage is the art of getting on with the other fellow. It means patience, self-control, forbearance. It means the laying aside of our self-conceit, and admitting to ourselves that judged by eyes less partial than our own, there may be much in us that is objectionable, the calls for alteration. It means toleration for views and opinions diametrically opposed to our most cherished convictions. It means of necessity the abandonment of many habits and indulgences that, however trivial, have grown to be important to us. It means the shaping of our own desires to the needs of others, the acceptance often of surroundings and conditions personally distasteful to us. It means affection, deep and strong enough to bear away the ugly things of life, its quarrels, wrongs, misunderstandings, swiftly and silently into the sea of forgetfulness. It means courage, good humor, common sense. That is what I am saying, explained Robina. It means loving him, even when he's naughty. Dick came across the field. Robina rose and slipped into the house. You were looking mighty solemn, Dad, said Dick. Thinking of life, Dick, I confessed of the meaning and the explanation of it. Yes, it's a problem, life, admitted Dick. A bit of a teaser, I agreed. We smoked in silence for a while. Loving a good woman must be a tremendous help to a man, said Dick. He looked very handsome, very galant, his boyish face flashing challenge to the fates. Tremendous, Dick, I agreed. Robina called to him that his supper was ready. He knocked the ashes from his pipe and followed her into the house. Their laughing voices came to me broken through the half-closed doors. From the night around me rose a strange, low murmur. It seemed to me as though above the silence I heard the far-off music of the mills of God.