should I have been, or at any rate driving the horses; but John was
by no means loath to be there, instead of holding the plough-tail. And
indeed, one of our old sayings is,--

For pleasure's sake I would liefer wet, Than ha' ten lumps of gold for
each one of my sweat.

And again, which is not a bad proverb, though unthrifty and unlike a
Scotsman's,--

God makes the wheat grow greener, While farmer be at his dinner.

And no Devonshire man, or Somerset either (and I belong to both of
them), ever thinks of working harder than God likes to see him.

Nevertheless, I worked hard at the gun, and by the time that I had
sent all the church-roof gutters, so far as I honestly could cut them,
through the red pine-door, I began to long for a better tool that would
make less noise and throw straighter. But the sheep-shearing came and
the hay-season next, and then the harvest of small corn, and the digging
of the root called 'batata' (a new but good thing in our neighbourhood,
which our folk have made into 'taties'), and then the sweating of the
apples, and the turning of the cider-press, and the stacking of the
firewood, and netting of the woodcocks, and the springles to be
minded in the garden and by the hedgerows, where blackbirds hop to the
molehills in the white October mornings, and grey birds come to look for
snails at the time when the sun is rising.

It is wonderful how time runs away, when all these things and a great
many others come in to load him down the hill and prevent him from