"How strong you are, Webb!" said Amy. "I suppose that if you had lived a
few hundred years ago you would have been hacking at people in the same
way."

"And so might have been a hero, and won your admiration if you had lived
then in some gray castle, with the floor of your bower strewn with
rushes. Now there is no career for me but that of a plain farmer."

"What manly task was given long before knighthood, eh, Webb? Right royal
was the commission, too. Was it not to subdue the earth? It seems to me
that you are striving after the higher mastery, one into which you can
put all your mind as well as muscle. Knocking people on the head wasn't a
very high art."

"What! not in behalf of a distressed damsel?"

"I imagine there will always be distressed damsels in the world. Indeed,
in fiction it would seem that many would be nothing if not distressed.
You can surely find one, Webb, and so be a knight in spite of our prosaic
times."

"I shall not try," he replied, laughing. "I am content to be a farmer,
and am glad you do not think our work is coarse and common. You obtained
some good ideas in England, Amy. The tastes of the average American girl
incline too much toward the manhood of the shop and office. There, Len, I
am rested now;" and he took the axe from his brother, who had been
lopping the branches from the prostrate tree.

Amy again watched his athletic figure with pleasure as he rapidly