There was so much enthusiasm in her voice that Adam laughed and asked
why, and she answered:--
"Like you, I have sound and sentimental reasons. The sound one is that
we shall need their fleece unless,--why, goodness gracious, Adam,
there is a baking-powder can of flax in the dresser, and I never
thought till this moment that we can plant it."
"True," answered Adam, "but given flax or fleece, what would you do
with it?"
"Spin it," she answered sententiously. "Of course you think I can't,
but it happens that I once lived, when I was a little girl, very near
to an old woman. I don't refer to her age, but her ideas. She carded
and spun and wove and dyed all the family clothing. She made her own
soap and wouldn't have a stove in the house. She had eight children,
too, and they all of them turned out badly. I used to go there off and
on; I think she looked on me as a kind of sinful amusement. Anyhow,
she told me the world was going to ruin, and the women were poor
'doless' creatures, who couldn't spin a hank of yarn, or gin a pound
of cotton, or heel a sock. She shook her head over me when she found I
couldn't knit, but she set a garter for me at once, and during the
seven or eight years that I went by her door on my way to school she
taught me all those marvelous accomplishments. I daresay I have
forgotten them."
"What are the sentimental reasons?" asked Adam.
She looked at the kid as it nestled against her shoulder.
"I have a fancy," she said, "that Nannette and her children are going
to minister to a mind diseased, and help pluck a rooted sorrow from
the brain. The world was getting too healthy. Has it ever struck you
that we have neither of us been sick for a day this year? I have had
to mother the chickens, but there has been no suffering. I'm not glad
to have pain come into the world, but it is good to be able to
alleviate it. We will put Nannette in a sling till her leg has a
chance to set, and by the time it is well she won't want to leave us.
As for the kids, I expect they will be like the plague of frogs, and
we shall find them in our beds and our ovens and our kneading troughs.
Oh, Adam, there is the house! Doesn't it look dear and homey?"
She put the kid back on the sled, and ran on, pointing out this and
that, the growth of the corn, the afternoon radiance, till they
reached their doorway. Then there were a thousand things to do. First
Nannette was made comfortable in the stable; then the chickens were
summoned to a meal of yellow corn, and when Lassie drove the cows into
the barnyard, each was congratulated in turn upon her calf, and those
interesting, if wobbly, bovine infants were carefully inspected. After
supper they sat down before the fire, very tired, but the nearest
happy they had been in a year. The dogs were lying about them, and the
thump, thump of first one tail and then another told the story of
canine content, while the kittens walked over them impartially.
"What a strange thing human nature is!" Adam said. "The only thing
needed to make our life perfect is that it shall not last. The moment,
if that moment ever comes, when it is real no more, it will become
ideal."
"I know," she said dreamily. "Things in the world used to be too good
to be true. This must cease to be, to be good at all."