Part 8 (2/2)

Well, Ill bring my sewing out hereor would you rather have me read to you? Theres something in the last number of

Noget your sewingblast that screw! Why doesnt it start?

Evidently sewing was better than the last number of anything. I settled myself under a lamp, while Jonathan, in the twilight beneath the sink, continued his mystic rites, with an accompaniment of mildly vituperative or persuasive language, addressed sometimes to his tools, sometimes to the screws and nuts and other parts, sometimes against the men who made them or the plumbers who put them in. Now and then I held a candle, or steadied some perverse bit of metal while he worked his will upon it. And at last the phnix did indeed rise, the pump was again a pump,at least it looked like one.

Suppose it doesnt work, I suggested.

Suppose it does, said Jonathan.

He began to pump furiously. Pour in water there! he directed. Keep on pouringdont stopnever mind if she does spout. I poured and he pumped, and there were the usual sounds of a pump resuming activity: gurglings and spittings, suckings and sudden spoutings; but at last it seemed to get its breatha few more long strokes of the handle, and the water poured.

What time is it? he asked.

Oh, fairly lateabout tenten minutes past.

Instead of our walk, we stood for a moment under the big maples before the house and looked out into a sea of moonlight. It silvered the sides of the old gray barns and washed over the blossoming apple trees beyond the house. Is there anything more sweetly still than the stillness of moonlight over apple blossoms! As we went out to the barns to lock up, even the little hencoops looked poetic. Pa.s.sing one of them, we half roused the feathered family within and heard m.u.f.fled peepings and a smothered _clk-clk_. Jonathan was by this time so serene that I felt I could ask him a question that had occurred to me.

Jonathan, how long _is_ three shakes of a lambs tail?

Apparently, my dear, it is the whole evening, he answered unruffled.

The next night was drizzly. Well, we would have books instead of a walk.

We lighted a fire, May though it was, and settled down before it. What shall we read? I asked, feeling very cozy.

Jonathan was filling his pipe with a leisurely deliberation good to look upon. With the match in his hand he pausedOh, I meant to tell youthose young turkeys of yoursthey were still out when I came through the yard. I wonder if they went in all right.

I have always noticed that if the turkeys grow up very fat and strutty and suggestive of Thanksgiving, Jonathan calls them our turkeys, but in the spring, when they are committing all the naughtinesses of wild and silly youth, he is apt to allude to them as those young turkeys of yours.

I rose wearily. No. They never go in all right when they get out at this timeespecially on wet nights. Ill have to find them and stow them.

Jonathan got up, too, and laid down his pipe. Youll need the lantern, he said.

We went out together into the May drizzlea good thing to be out in, too, if you are out for the fun of it. But when you are hunting silly little turkeys who literally dont know enough to go in when it rains, and when you expected and wanted to be doing something else, then it seems different, the drizzle seems peculiarly drizzly, the silliness of the turkeys seems particularly and unendurably silly.

We waded through the drenched gra.s.s and the tall, dripping weeds, listening for the faint, foolish peeping of the wanderers. Some we found under piled fence rails, some under burdock leaves, some under nothing more protective than a plantain leaf. By ones and twos we collected them, half drowned yet shrilly remonstrant, and dropped them into the dry shed where they belonged. Then we returned to the house, very wet, feeling the kind of discouragement that usually besets those who are forced to furnish prudence to fools.

Nine oclock, said Jonathan, and were too wet to sit down. If you could just shut in those turkeys on wet days

Shut them in! Didnt I shut them in! They must have got out since four oclock.

Isnt the shed tight? he asked.

Chicken-tight, but not turkey-tight, apparently. Nothing is turkey-tight.

Theyre bigger than chickens.

Not in any one spot they arent. Theyre like coiled wirewhen they stretch out to get through a crack they have _no_ dimension except length, their bodies are mere imaginary points to hang feathers on. You dont know little turkeys.

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