that the cuckoo had only one song to sing. She tried not to hoe in time
to that song, but the monotony of it possessed her. Her row of beans
stretched in front of her right across the world; every time she looked
along it the end seemed farther away. Every time she raised her hoe the
sword of pain slipped under her guard.

The Dog David, impatient of her unnatural taste in occupations, had
forsaken her. She could trace his course by a moving ripple across the
potato patch, just as a shark's movement seams the sea.

Forty beans.

Time wears a strangely different guise out of doors. Under the sun time
stands almost still. Only when every minute is a physical effort do you
discover that there really are sixty minutes in an hour, and that one
hour is very little nearer to the evening than another. People who work
indoors under the government of clocks never meet time face to face.
Their quick seconds are dismissed by the clicking of typewriters, and
when their typewriters fall silent, their day is over. We of Out of
Doors have a daily eternity to contend with during which only our hands
are busy; our minds may grow old and young again between sunrise and
sunset; the future may be remade in an hour, hope killed and reborn
before a blackbird's song is over. We know the length of days. And after
many slow months of stress we come back again, old and bewildered with
much silence and much wondering, to our friends in offices, and find
them unchanged, floating innocently on the surface of time.

Sarah Brown dropped her hoe and fell upon her knees.

"I can't hoe any more," she said. "There are twenty-five more beans, but