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But Nancy was framed and planned for other things, and 'Zekiel was an insufficient channel for her soft, womanly sympathy and her bright activity of mind and body. 'Zekiel had lost his tail in a mowing-machine; 'Zekiel had the asthma, and the immersion of his nose in milk made him sneeze, so he was wont to slip his paw in and out of the dish and lick it patiently for five minutes together.
Like the reaper, the mowing-machine is buried under the swathe it cuts, and flowers fall over it broad ox-eye daisies and red sorrel. Upon the hedge June roses bloom; blackbirds whistle in the oaks; now and again come the soft hollow notes of the cuckoo. Angles and wheels, cranks and cogs, where are they? They are lost; it is not these we see, but the flowers and the pollen on the grass.
The moral and physiological elements remain essentially the same as when man first began to walk up and down the earth and destroy his fellow-creatures. To make an army a thorough mowing-machine, it then seemed necessary that it should be disciplined into complete mechanical obedience. To secure this, prompt payment of wages and inexorable punishment of delinquencies were indispensable.
And now be off, and play in the hay, and come back to me when you are tired. Let us lie down at the foot of this old oak, and see what we can see. And hear what we can hear, too. What is that humming all round us, now that the noisy mowing-machine has stopped? And as much softer than the noise of mowing-machine hum, as the machines which make it are more delicate and more curious.
The solitary reaper alone in the great field goes round and round, the red fans striking beside him, alone with the sunlight, and the blue sky, and the distant hills; and he and his reaper are as much of the corn-field as the long-forgotten sickle or the reaping-hook. The sharp rattle of the mowing-machine disturbs the corncrake in the meadow.
One of the elders of this society, Hewitt Chandler, a man of uncommon mechanical ingenuity, and the inventor of a mowing-machine which was made here for some years, has contrived a way of bending staves without setting them up in the cask, which saves much time and labor, and makes this part of their business additionally profitable.
Now, what manufacturer could endure such conduct as this? Is it not enough to drive a saint out of his patience? Of course the larger farmers who can afford it have the resource of the mowing-machine, but there are hundreds and thousands of farms upon which its sharp rattle has not yet been heard.
Tim took the four days they were at the hay to think about it. At the end of that time, with the hay in stack and the mowing-machine loaded into the wagon for the rough journey to the ranch, Tim unburdened his mind. "I've decided to try you out, John," he announced, but shaking his head as he spoke, as if he doubted the wisdom of the venture.
And after that Cuffy had been very curious to see that wonderful machine, which was pulled back and forth through the meadows by horses, leaving behind it a broad path of grass which lay flat on the ground. So that was the reason why Cuffy stole away from home. He felt that he simply must see a mowing-machine. Nothing but the sight of a mowing-machine would make him happy. He was sure of that.
Gunning's comments during the process successfully sapped Fanny Fitz's control of her usually equable temper, "He's a beast!" she said wrathfully to Freddy, as the party moved soberly homewards in the burning June afternoon, with the horseflies clustering round them, and the smell of new-mown grass wafting to them from where, a field or two away, came the rattle of Rupert Gunning's mowing-machine.
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