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“You’re pretty fair at working,” said Uncle Rob, and that was praise almost hysterical.

Indeed, in one aspect of labor, Sidney was better than any of them, even the pine-carved Uncle Rob. He could endure wet dawns, wild winds, all-day drenching. It seems to be true that farmers are more upset by bad weather than most outdoor workers—sailors, postmen, carpenters, brakemen, teamsters. Perhaps it is because they are less subject to higher authority; except for chores and getting in the hay, they can more nearly do things in their own time, and they build up a habit of taking shelter on nasty days. Whether or no, it was true that just the city crises that had vexed Sidney, from icy pavements to sudden fire alarms, had given him the ability to stand discomforts and the unexpected, like a little Cockney surprisingly stolid in the trenches.

He learned the silent humor of the authentic Yankee. Evenings he sat with neighbors on the bench before the general store. To a passing stranger they seemed to be saying nothing, but when the stranger had passed, Uncle Rob would drawl, “Well, if I had fly nets on my hosses, guess I’d look stuck-up too!” and the others would chuckle with contempt at the alien.

This, thought Sidney, was good talk—not like the smart gabble of the city. It was all beautiful, and he knew it, though in his vocabulary there was no such word as “beautiful,” and when he saw the most flamboyant sunset he said only, “Guess going to be clear tomorrow. ”

And so he went back to Brooklyn, not as to his home but as to prison, and as a prison corridor he saw the narrow street with little houses like little cells.

Five minutes after he had entered the house, his father laughed. “Well, did you get enough of farming? I guess you’ll appreciate your school now! I won’t rub it in, but I swear, how Rob and Ben can stand it—”

“I kind of liked it, Dad. I think I’ll be a farmer. I—kind of liked it. ”

His father had black side whiskers, and between them he had thin cheeks that seemed, after Uncle Rob and Uncle Ben, pallid as the under side of a toadstool. They flushed now, and William shouted:

“You’re an idiot! What have I done to have a son who is an idiot? The way I’ve striven and worked and economized to give you a chance to get ahead, to do something worth while, and then you want to slip right back and be ordinary, like your uncles! So you think you’d like it! You’re a fool! Sure you like it in summer, but if you knew it like I do—rousted out to do the chores five o’clock of a January morning, twenty below zero, and maybe have to dig through two feet of snow to get to the barn! Have to tramp down to the store, snowstorm so thick you can’t see five feet in front of you!”

“I don’t guess I’d mind it much. ”

“Oh, you don’t! Don’t be a fool! And no nice company like here— go to bed with the chickens, a winter night, and no nice lodge meeting or church supper or lectures like there is here!”

“Don’t care so much for those things. Everybody talking all the while. I like it quiet, like in the country. ”

“Well, you will care so much for those things, or I’ll care you, my fine young man! I’m not going to let you slump back into being a rube like Ben, and don’t you forget it! I’ll make you work at your books! I’ll make you learn to appreciate good society and dressing proper and getting ahead in the world and amounting to something! Yes, sir, amounting to something! Do you think for one moment that after the struggle I’ve gone through to give you a chance—the way I studied in a country school and earned my way through business college and went to work at five dollars a week in a real-estate office and studied and economized and worked late, so I could give you this nice house and advantages and opportunity—No, sir! You’re going to be a lawyer or a doctor or somebody that amounts to something, and not a rube!”