everlasting round, the changes from task to task, according to the
seasons, being no greater than in the case of the animals that alter
their actions and habits to suit the varying conditions of the year.
March and August and December, and every month, will bring about the
changes in the atmosphere and earth and vegetation and in the animals,
which have been from of old, which he knows how to meet, and the old,
familiar task, lambing-time, shearing-time, root and seed crops hoeing,
haymaking, harvesting. It is a life of the extremest simplicity, without
all those interests outside the home and the daily task, the innumerable
distractions, common to all persons in other classes and to the workmen
in towns as well. Incidentally it may be said that it is also the
healthiest, that, speaking generally, the agricultural labourer is the
healthiest and sanest man in the land, if not also the happiest, as some
believe.

It is this life of simple, unchanging actions and of habits that are
like instincts, of hard labour in sun and wind and rain from day to day,
with its weekly break and rest, and of but few comforts and no luxuries,
which serves to bind man and wife so closely. And the longer their life
goes on together the closer and more unbreakable the union grows. They
are growing old: old friends and companions have died or left them;
their children have married and gone away and have their own families
and affairs, so that the old folks at home are little remembered, and to
all others they have become of little consequence in the world. But they
do not know it, for they are together, cherishing the same memories,
speaking of the same old, familiar things, and their lost friends and
companions, their absent, perhaps estranged, children, are with them
still in mind as in the old days. The past is with them more than the
present, to give an undying interest to life; for they share it, and it
is only when one goes, when the old wife gets the tea ready and goes