The following morning was a balmy and exquisite first of May, but realism again compels me to confess that, having been an English instructor for seven years, and having read manuscripts the night before till 2 A.M., I did not leap lightly from my couch at the breakfast call, nor did I sing ecstatically, as I looked from my window:

What I actually did was to curse to myself at having to clean my teeth in bitterly cold water, something I have always loathed. Nor was I greatly cheered by Mrs. Temple's coffee. The New England farmer's wife can cook everything but coffee. But there seems to be something in that simple art which completely baffles her. Perhaps the coffee has something to do with it!

Her cheery face, however, was not long to be resisted, and Bert hustled me off immediately after the meal to meet Hard Cider Howard, whom, by some rural wireless, he had already summoned.

As we walked down the road, I glanced toward my lone pine, and saw my horse and Mike's hitched to the plough, with Joe driving and Mike holding the handles. Across the green pasture, between the road and the hayfield, already four rich brown furrows were shining up to the sun.

"Well, Mike didn't wait long!" I exclaimed. "I wonder why he started in there?"

"I told him to," said Bert. "That's goin' ter be yer pertater crop this year."

"Is it?" said I. "Why?" I felt a little peeved. After all, this was my farm.

"Cuz it's pasture land thet's good fer pertaters, an' yer don't need it fer the cows, an' it kin be worked ter give yer a crop right off, even though 'twant ploughed under in the fall," Bert answered. "You trust yer Uncle Hiram fer a bit, sonny."

I blushed at my own peevishness, and thanked him humbly. At the house we found awaiting a strange-looking man, small, wrinkled, unkempt, with a discouraged moustache and a nose of a decidedly brighter hue than the rest of his countenance. He was tapping at the sills of the house.

"How about it, Hard? Cement?" said Bert.

Hard Cider nodded to me, with a keen glance from his little, bloodshot eyes.

"Yep," he said. "Stucco over it. Brick underpinnin's be ez good ez noo. Go inside."

We stepped upon the side porch, Bert handing me the key and I opening the door of my new dwelling with a secret thrill. Hard Cider at once began on the kitchen floor, ripping up a plank to examine the timbers beneath. There was no cellar under the kitchen, but the timbers were, like those of the barn, huge beams of hand-hewn oak, and were sound.

"Plane them planks down and lay a maple floor over 'em," said Hard, with an air of finality.

"Very well," said I meekly. "But my woodwork has got to be cypress in the living-room. I insist on cypress."

"New step," he added, as we came to the door up into the main house.

"Hold on!" said I. "This door leads into the front hall. I don't want that. I want this door closed up and put into the north room, which I'm going to use for a dining-room."

"Ain't goin' ter eat in the kitchen, eh? Very well," said Hard. He examined the old door frame carefully, and jotted something in a dirty notebook, which he drew from his pocket, first wetting his flat carpenter's pencil on his tongue.

We found that the north room had apparently been used only as a kind of storage closet, doubtless because there was no heater in the house. It had never been papered, and the walls, with a little touching up, were ready for kalsomining. Hard examined the plaster with the loving eye of a connoisseur.

"Built ter last in them days," I heard him mutter.

The room extended half the depth of the house, which, to be sure, was not great. Beyond it was a second room, on the northeast corner, of the same size.

We now crossed the hall to the south side, where there were two corresponding rooms. Here, as on the other side, the chimney and fireplaces were on the inside walls, and the mantels were of a simple but very good colonial pattern, though they had been browned by smoke and time to dirt colour.

"Now I want these two rooms made into one," said I. "I want one of the doors into the hall closed up, and a glass door cut out of the south side to a pergola veranda. Can you do it?"

Hard examined the partition. He climbed on a box which we dragged in, and ripped away plaster and woodwork ruthlessly, both at the top and at places on the sides, all without speaking a word.

"Yep," he said finally, "ef yer don't mind a big crossbeam showin'. She's solid oak. Yer door, though, 'll have to be double, with a beam in the middle."

"Fine!" I cried. "One to go in by, one to go out. Guests please keep to the right!"

"Hev ter alter yer chimney," he added, "or yer'll hev two fireplaces."

"Fine again!" cried I. "A long room with two fireplaces, and a double-faced bookcase coming out at right angles between them, with two settles below it, one for each fireplace! Better than I'd dreamed!"

"Suit yerself," said Hard.

We next arranged tentatively for a brick veranda with a pergola top on the southern end of the house, and then went upstairs. Here the four small chambers needed little but minor repairs and plaster work, save that over the dining-room, which was to be converted into the bathroom. The great space over the kitchen was to be cut into two servants' bedrooms, with dormer windows. It already had the two windows, one to the north and one to the south, and had evidently been used as a drying-room for apples and the like. Hard figured here for some time, and then led us silently downstairs again, and through the front door.

My front doorway had once been a thing of beauty, with two little panel windows at the sides, and above all, on the outside, a heavy, hand-carved broken pediment, like the top of a Governor Winthrop highboy. Hard looked at it with admiration gleaming in his eyes. "I'd ruther restore this than all the rest o' the job," he said, and his ugly, rum-soaked little face positively shone with enthusiasm.

"Go ahead," said I; "only I want the new steps of brick, widely spaced, with a lot of cement showing between. I'm going to terrace it here in front, too — a grass terrace for ten feet out."

"Thet's right, thet's right!" he exclaimed. "Now I'll go order the lumber, an' bring yer the estimate termorrer."

"Seems to me the usual proceeding would be the other way around!" I gasped.

"Well, yer want me ter do the job, don't yer? Or don't yer?" he said brusquely.

"Of course, of course!" I amended hastily. "Go ahead!"

Hard climbed into a broken-down wagon, and disappeared. "Don't you worry," said Bert. "I'll see he treats yer right."

"It isn't that," I said sadly. "It's that I've just remembered I forgot to include any painters' bills in my own estimate."

Bert looked at me in a kind of speechless pity for a moment. Then he said slowly: "Wal, I'll be swizzled! Wait till I tell maw! An' her always stickin' up fer a college education!"

"Just for that, I'll show you!" cried I. "I never trimmed an apple tree in my life, but I'm going to work on this orchard, and I'm going to save it, all myself. It will be better than yours in three years."

"Go to it," laughed Bert. "Come back fer dinner, though. Neow I'll drive over ter the depot an' git yer freight. They telephoned this mornin' it had come."

"Good!" I cried. "You might bring me a bag of cement, too, and a gallon of carbolic acid."

"Ye ain't tired o' life so soon, be yer?"

"No," said I, "but I'm going to show you rubes how to treat an orchard."

Bert went off laughing, and presently I saw him driving toward town with his heavy wagon. I walked up to the plateau field to greet Mike. As I crested the ridge the field lay before me, the great, lone pine standing sentinel at the farther side; and half of it was frail, young green, and half rich, shining brown.

"She ploughs tough, sor," said Mike, as the panting horses paused for breath, "but she'll harrer down good. Be the seed pertaters come yit?"

"Bert has gone for them," said I. "Let me hold the plough once."

Mike, I fancied, winked at his son Joe, who was a strong lad of twenty, with an amiable Irish grin. So everybody was regarding me as a joke! Well, I was, even then, as strong as Mike, and I'd held a sweep, if not a plough! I picked up the handles and lifted the plough around, setting the point to the new furrow. Joe started the horses. The blade wabbled, took a mad skid for the surface, and the handles hit me a blow in the ribs which knocked my breath out. Mike grinned. I set my teeth and the ploughshare, and again Joe started the horses. Putting forth all my strength I held the plough under the sod this time, but the furrow I ploughed started merrily away from the straight line, in spite of all my efforts, and began to run out into the unbroken ground to the left. I pulled the plough back again to the starting-point, and tried once more. This trip, when I reached the point where my first furrow had departed from the straight and narrow way, the cross strip of sod came over the point like a comber over a boat's bow, and the horses stopped with a jerk, while the point went down and again the handles smote me in the ribs.

"It ain't so azy as it looks," said Mike.

"I'll do it if I haven't a rib left," said I grimly.

And I did it. My first full furrow looked like the track of a snake under the influence of liquor, but I reversed the plough and came back fairly straight. I was beginning to get the hang of it. My next furrow was respectable, but not deep. But on the second return trip I ploughed her straight, and I ploughed her deep, and that without exerting nearly so much beef as on the first try. Most things are easy when you once know how.

On this return trip the sweat was starting from my forehead, and the smell of the horses and of the warm, fresh-turned earth was strong in my nostrils. I didn't look at my pine, nor think of book plates. I was proud at what I had done, and my muscles gloried in the toil. Again I swung the plough around, and drove it across the field, feeling the reluctant grass roots fighting every muscle of my arms.

"There," said I, triumphantly, "you plough all the rest as deep as that!"

"Begobs, ye'z all right!" cried Mike.

I went back again down the slope with all the joy of a small boy who has suddenly made an older boy recognize his importance. I went at once to the shed, found a rusty saw (for my pruning saws, of course, had not yet come), and descended upon the orchard. I had a couple of bulletins on pruning in my pocket, with pictures of old trees remorselessly headed down. I took a fresh look at the pictures, reread some of the text where I had marked it, and tackled the first tree, carefully repeating to myself: "Remove only a third the first year, remove only a third the first year."

This, I decided, quite naturally did not refer to dead wood. By the time I had the dead wood cut out of that first old tree, and all the water spouts removed (as I recalled my grandfather used to call them), which didn't seem necessary for new bearing wood, the poor thing began to look naked. On one side an old water spout or sucker had achieved the dignity of a limb and shot far into the air. I was up in the tree carefully heading this back and out when Bert came driving by with his wagon heaped to overflowing.

"Hi!" he called, "yer tryin' ter kill them trees entire!"

I got down and came out to the road. "You're a fine man and a true friend, Mr. Temple," said I, "but I'm going to be the doctor for this orchard. A chap's got to have some say for himself, you know."

"Well, they ain't much good, anyhow, them trees," said Bert cheerfully.

We now fell to unloading the wagon. We opened up the woodsheds and storehouse behind the kitchen, stowed in the barrels of seed potatoes, the fertilizers, the various other seeds, the farm implements, sprayers, and so on. The hotbed frames and sashes were put away for future use, as it was too late to need them now. The horse hoe Bert had not been able to bring on this trip. Next we got my books and furniture into the house or shed, and tired, hot, and dirty, we drove on up the road for dinner. As we passed the upper field, I saw that the ploughing was nearly done. The brown furrows had already lost their gloss, as my hands had already lost their whiteness.

"Well, I'm a farmer now!" said I, surveying my soil-caked boots and grimy clothes.

"Yer on the way, anyhow," said Bert. "But yer'll have ter cultivate thet field hard, seein's how it oughter hev been ploughed last fall."

That afternoon I went back to my orchard, got out my shiny and sharp new double-edged pruning saw, and sawed till both arms ached. I sawed under limbs and over limbs, right-handed and left-handed, standing on my feet and on my head. I obeyed the first rule, to saw close to the trunk, so the bark can cover the scar. I obeyed the rule to let light into the tops. I didn't head my trees down as much as the pictures indicated, for I wanted my orchard before the house as a decoration quite as much as a source of fruit supply. One old tree, split by a winter storm, I decided to chop down entirely. About half-past three, as I supposed it to be, I went for an axe, and heard Mike putting the horse into the barn and calling the cows. I looked at my watch. It was five o'clock! I didn't get the axe, but walked back and surveyed the havoc I had wrought — dead limbs strewing the ground, bright-barked water spouts lying among them, tangles of top branches heaped high, and above this litter three old trees rising, apparently half denuded, with great white scars all over them where the limbs had been removed. I had gone that first day across half the top row of the orchard, and I suddenly realized that during the entire time I had been at work not a thought had crossed my mind except of apple trees and their culture. I had been utterly absorbed, joyfully absorbed, in the process of sawing off limbs! Where, said I to myself, are those poetic reflections, those delicious day dreams which come, in books, to the workers in gardens? Can it be that, in reality, the good gardener thinks of his job? Or am I simply a bad gardener?

I decided to go to the barn and ask Mike. I found him washing his hands, preparatory to milking, and looking extremely bored. He used an antiseptic solution which Bert had provided, for Bert was still buying my milk.

"Sure, it's silly rules they be makin' now about a little thing like milkin'," he said.

I wasn't ready to argue with him then, but I secretly resolved that I'd make him wear a milking coat, also. I asked abruptly: "Mike, what do you think about when you are working in the garden?"

Mike reflected quite seriously for a full moment, while the alternate ring of the milk streams sang a tune on the bottom of the pail.

"Begobs, Oi niver thought o' that before," he said. "Sure, it's interestin' to think what ye think about. Oi guess Oi thinks mostly o' me gardenin'. It ain't till Oi straightens the kink out o' me back and gits me lunch pail in the shade that Oi begins to wonder if the Dimicrats 'll carry the country or why we can't go sivin days without a drink, like the camels."

"You sort of have to keep your mind on your job, to do it right, eh?"

"Sure, if ye've got one to keep," Mike laughed.

The milk streams had ceased to ring. They were sizzling now, for the bottom of the pail was covered. There was a warm smell of milk in the stable, and of hay and cattle. Through the little door at the end I saw framed a pretty landscape of my pasture, then woods rising up a hill, and then the blue mountains, purpling now with sunset. My arms ached. My ribs, where the plough handles had hit, were sore. I was sleepily, deliciously, tired. I had done a real day's work. I was rather proud of it, too, proud that I could stand so much physical toil. After all, it is human to glory in your muscles.

"Good night," I called to Mike, as I started for home.

"Good night, sor," he sang cheerily back.

Upon the plateau I saw my rusty old disk harrow — a legacy from Milt — standing on the brown earth. The furrows had disappeared. The field was almost ready for planting. I took a bath, rubbing my ribs and aching shoulders very tenderly, ate my supper hungrily, and settled down to my manuscripts. In ten minutes I was nodding.

"Good heavens!" said I, "this will never do! I'll have to get up in the morning and work."

So I bade Mrs. Temple wake me when she got up at five.

"Well," I reflected, as I tumbled into bed, "you can't have everything and a country estate, too. Fancy me getting up at five o'clock!"