Nicholas raised his head and stared with unseeing eyes at the gorgeous
east. A rooster crowed shrilly, and he turned in the direction of the
barnyard. Then he flicked the ropes gently and went on, his gaze on the
ground. His thoughts, which at first were fixed solely upon the teeth of
the harrow, took tumultuous flight, and he reviewed for the hundredth
time his conversation with the judge and the vast avenue of the future
which was opening before him. He would not be like his father, of this
he was convinced--his father, who was always working with nothing to
show for it--whose planting was never on time, and whose implements were
never in place. His father had never had this gnawing desire to know
things, this passionate hatred of the work which he might not neglect.
His father had never tried to beat against the barriers of his ignorance
and been driven back, and beat again and wept, and read what he couldn't
understand. The teacher at the public school had told him that he was
far ahead of his years, and yet they had taken him away when he was
doing his level best, and put him to dragging the land, and gathering
the peanuts, and carrying the truck to market, and marking the sheep
with red paint, and bringing up the cows, and doing all the odd,
innumerable jobs they could devise. He let the ropes fall for an instant
and dug his fist into his eye; then he took them up again and went on
stolidly. At last the sun came out boldly above the hill, and the
hollows were flooded with light. In the centre of the field the boy's
head glowed like some large red insect. A hawk, winging slowly above
him, looked down as if uncertain of his species, and fluttered off
indifferently.

At six o'clock his stepmother came to the back door and called him to
breakfast.