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“Yeh?”

“Sure they do. Didn’t you hear how they said they wouldn’t mind tramping to school and not having any movies?”

“Sid, maybe you’ll understand kids when you get to be a granddad. Kids will always agree with anything that sounds exciting. Rob thinks it would be dandy to hoof it two miles through the snow to school. He won’t! Not once he’s done it!” Uncle Rob thrust his hands behind his skinny, bark-brown old neck on the maculate pillow. He was making perhaps the longest oration of his life. The light flickered, and a spider moved indignantly in its web in a corner. “No,” said Uncle Rob, “he won’t like it. I never did. And the schoolmaster used to lick me. I hated it, crawling through that snow and then get licked because you’re late. And jiminy— haven’t thought of it for thirty years, I guess, maybe forty, but I remember how some big fellow would dare you to put your tongue to your lunch pail, and it was maybe thirty below, and your tongue stuck to it and it took the hide right off! No, I never liked any of it, especially chores. ”

“Rob, listen! I’m serious! The kids will maybe kind of find it hard at first, but they’ll get to like it, and they’ll grow up real folks and not city saps. It’ll be all right with them. I’ll see to that. It’s Mabelle. Listen, Rob, I’ve got a swell idea about her, and I want you to help me. You get hold of the ladies of the township—the Grange members and the Methodist ladies and like that. You tell ’em Mabelle is a swell city girl, and it would be dandy for the neighborhood if they could get her to stay here. She’s g
rand, but she does kind of fall for flattery, and in the Bronx she ain’t so important, and if these ladies came and told her they thought she was the cat’s pajamas, maybe she’d fall for it, and then I guess maybe she might stay, if the ladies came—”

“They wouldn’t!”

Uncle Rob had been rubbing his long and prickly chin and curling his toes in his gray socks.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, first place, the ladies round here would be onto your Mabelle. They ain’t so backwoods as they was in your time. Take Mrs. Craig. Last three winters, her and her husband, Frank, have packed up the flivver and gone to Florida. But that ain’t it. Fact is, Sid, I kind of sympathize with Mabelle. ”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I never was strong for farming. Hard life, Sid. Always thought I’d like to keep store or something in the city. You forget how hard the work is here. You with your easy job, just filling a few teeth! No, I can’t help you, Sid. ”

“I see. All right. Sorry for disturbing you. ”

As he crept downstairs in bewilderment, Sidney prayed—he who so rarely prayed—“O Lord, doesn’t anybody but me love the land any more? What is going to happen to us? Why, all our life comes from the land!”

He knew that in the morning he would beg Mabelle to stay for a fortnight—and that she would not stay. It was his last night here. So all night long, slow and silent, he walked the country roads, looking at hemlock branches against the sky, solemnly shaking his head and wondering why he could never rid himself of this sinfulness of longing for the land; why he could never be grown-up and ambitious and worthy, like his father and Mabelle and Uncle Rob.