I played my part. I took my place. And all hard
things grew simple, and all crooked things seemed straight, and all
roads were open and clear before me. Many times that day I paused and
looked up from my work knowing that I had something to be happy for.
At one o'clock Dick and I lagged our way unwillingly out to work
again--rusty of muscles, with a feeling that the heat would now surely
be unendurable and the work impossibly hard. The scythes were oddly
heavy and hot to the touch, and the stones seemed hardly to make a sound
in the heavy noon air. The cows had sought the shady pasture edges, the
birds were still, all the air shook with heat. Only man must toil!
"It's danged hot," said Dick conclusively.
How reluctantly we began the work and how difficult it seemed compared
with the task of the morning! In half an hour, however, the reluctance
passed away and we were swinging as steadily as we did at any time in
the forenoon. But we said less--if that were possible--and made every
ounce of energy count. I shall not here attempt to chronicle all the
events of the afternoon, how we finished the mowing of the field and how
we went over it swiftly and raked the long windrows into cocks, or how,
as the evening began to fall, we turned at last wearily toward the
house.
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