"And that's no easy achievement." The girl spoke from her own
experience. "It's like pulling molars to press your lips together and
be quiet when you want to rear and tear and stamp your feet."
"Well, come down to hard facts, and how many of us will have to admit
that we have feelings like that at times? There is still a good share
of the primitive man left in our natures. We're not saints. Why, even
the churches that believe in saints don't canonize mortals until they
have been a hundred years dead--they want to be sure they are dead and
their mortal weaknesses forgotten."
Amanda laughed. A moment later they turned from the country road and
followed a narrower path that was bordered on one side by green fields
and on the other by a strip of woods, an irregular arm reaching out
from Amanda's moccasin haunt. The road led up-hill at a sharp angle, so
that when the traveler reached the top, panting and tired, there
stretched before him in delightful panorama a view of Lancaster County
that more than compensated for the discomfort and effort of the climb.
Amanda and Martin stood facing that sight. Behind them lay the cool,
tree-clad hill, before them the blue August sky looked down on
Lancaster County farms, whose houses and red barns seemed dropped like
kindergarten toys into the midst of undulating green fields. One could
sit or stand under the sheltering shade of the trees along the edge of
the woods and yet look up to the sky or out upon the Garden Spot and
farther off, to the blue, hazy mountain ridge that touched the sky-line
and cut off the view of what lay beyond.
Martin threw the pillows on the ground and they sat down in the cool
shade.
"Can anything beat this?" he asked lazily as he ruffled the dry
leaves about him with his hands. "You know, Amanda, I could never
understand why, with my love for outdoors, I can't be a farmer. When I
was a boy I used to consider it the natural thing for me to do as my
father did. I did help him, but I never liked the work. You couldn't
coax the other boys to the city; they'd rather pitch hay or plant corn.
And yet I like nothing better than to be out in the open. During the
summer I'm out in the garden after I come home from the city, and that
much of working the soil I like, but for a steady job--not for me!"
"It's best to do work one likes," said the girl. "Not every person who
likes outdoors was meant to be a farmer. Be glad you like to be out in
the open. But I can't conceive of any person not liking it. I could sit
and look at the sky for one whole day. It's so encouraging. Sometimes
when I walk home from school after a hard day and I look down on the
road and think over the problems of handling certain trying children so
as to get the best out of them and the latent best in them developed, I
look up all of a sudden and the sky is so wonderful that, somehow, my
troubles seem trivial. It's just as though the sky were saying, 'Child,
you've been looking down so long and worrying about little things that
you've forgotten that the sky is blue and the clouds are still sailing
over you.' And, Martin, don't you like the stars? I never get tired of
looking at them. I never care to gaze at the full moon unless there are
clouds sailing over her. She's too big and brazen, too compelling. But
the twinkle of the stars and the sudden flashing out of dim ones you
didn't see at first always makes me feel like singing. Ever feel that
way?"