Ellis Meredith

Why wilt thou take a castle on thy back
When God gave but a pack?
With gown of honest wear, why wilt thou tease
For braid and fripperies?
Learn thou with flowers to dress, with birds to feed,
And pinch thy large want to thy little need.

Frederick Langbridge.

The next morning dawned clear and warm, and Adam, coming in with his milk-pails, held out his hand to Robin. There were three ripe strawberries.

"See," he said, "they are the harbingers of spring, or a California climate, and either way makes our gain. California without fogs and fleas is heavenly enough for most people."

Nevertheless, they completed the shelling of the corn, and made a bin for it at the end of the tunnel, removing the cat family to the house, where Lassie viewed their advent with jealous eyes. One day when they had been hulling corn for nearly a week, Adam sat down and began laughing. "Do you know how much corn it takes to plant an acre?" he asked.

"No," said Robin, blankly. "I know something about the number of kernels to the hill,—'one for the cutworm, and one for the crow, and one for something-or-other else, I forget what, and one to grow.' Why?"

"It takes eight quarts to plant an acre. We have raised about thirty bushels to the acre, which is very well for sod. That will make over fifteen thousand pounds of meal and hominy, and will feed us for seven years, even if we eat six pounds daily. Unless there is a winter season, when we must do something for the animals, there is not the slightest use in planting more than an acre. As to the wheat, even with a light yield, there would be fifteen hundred pounds to the acre. We have fresh vegetables all the time, and there will be any quantity of potatoes and cabbage and beans."

"And yet people starved everywhere, and it seemed to me that the farmers were the worst off of all."

"They farmed to make money, not to live, and they had no control over the markets. They had to sell or build barns. It is only Dives who can afford to tear down the old ones and build greater. It was easier for them to sell cheap to a man who took their wheat and held it until it could be sold back to them as dear flour. They were eaten up with mortgages and pests and interest. Have you noticed that there are almost no insects here, not even flies and mosquitoes? They were never so bad in the mountains, and apparently they have been wiped out with the rest."

"Truly, Adam," she said, "speaking just of the physical part of it, would you regret this year?"

He stood up and stretched out his arms, a splendid type of manhood, smooth-shaven, with clear-cut features, bronzed, square-shouldered, and powerful.

"Oh, you are magnificent!" she cried involuntarily. "It has done you good, great good. You are twice the man you were in strength and health and resource; and if only we had been cast away on an island, knowing we were sure to be rescued some day soon, I should not be sorry at all."

He colored and answered frankly: "Without the mental strain, I should not regret this year. Sometimes, when I am sure it is a dream, and that presently we shall waken, I can't help wondering whether we shall not wish we had fretted less and enjoyed it more. When I come to think of it, I believe it is the first time since I was a child that ways and means have not troubled me. It was a good thing to work as we have, to keep our minds employed, but now that we are sure that starvation is five or six years away, we might as well drop the old, headlong rush to get more than we need. That has been the trouble ever since men began to make history. It was the same thing,—power, conquest, riches, everything; too much to eat, too much to drink, too much to wear—"

"Well, you can't say that of us," said Robin ruefully, looking down at her made-over gown.

"Well, perhaps not, and I don't mean that there ever was a time when there was a general surfeit, but I mean that was the tendency. There would have been plenty for all, if part had not taken more than their share; as for the other part who had not enough, they only longed for the opportunity to simulate their unwise betters. When they could, they took too much, too, if it was only to drink and forget their misery. We could have lived so well and so easily, if we had lived more simply, coming more directly in contact with nature, as we have this year."

She shook her head doubtfully. "This has not been real life at all. We have only kept alive. We haven't read anything or done anything or helped any one—"

"Except each other and the animals dependent on us. On the whole, I don't know but that we have accomplished about as much as when we were devoting most of our attention to paying board and rent bills. We have helped each other more than we can measure. We should have died had we been left alone with our thoughts. All of life is not in cities, nor even in books."

She did not answer for some moments, and then said slowly, "If it were a dream, and we were going back to the old life, what would you regret most?"

"If we were going back to the world we know, I should regret a good many things; first, I suppose, that I did not realize sooner that we must be going back, instead of letting myself be utterly overwhelmed. Then I think I should be sorry that I didn't practise, À la Demosthenes, when I had a whole coast to myself, and most of all I should regret that we have not kept a record of our lives from day to day. There is other writing I should want to do,—but there is no paper, and I don't know how to make any."

"There is plenty of time to do all that yet," she said. "What else would you wish you had done?"

He looked at her, for there was something in her voice he did not understand, but her eyes were turned from him. "I should regret that we had not talked more. Do you know, we have been very silent? And we used to have so many things to talk over in the old days. I should have twinges of remorse that I did not make more of your companionship when I had it, instead of raising more corn than we can eat in half a dozen years, and letting you tear your hands shelling it." He stooped and kissed one of her slender hands. She withdrew it quickly; there had never been even a touch of the sentimental between them.

"What would you regret?" he asked suddenly.

She shrank a little, and her eyes looked far away, past the gateway. "Some of the things you mention; very much that I had not encouraged you more to go on with your work, but mainly—"

"Well, mainly?"

She jumped down from the rock where she had been sitting, and answered evasively, "I don't think there is any mainly, unless it is that when I had such a good chance to be a hermit, I couldn't remember all those wonderful Mahatma practices that make one so good and so wise. The only formulas I have really tried hard to recall are for cooking without sugar, or spice, or fruit."