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So I stepped over toward him and said very earnestly: "My friend, don't think I am merely joking you. I was never more in earnest in all my life. When I told you I was a road-worker I meant it, but I had in mind the mending of other kinds of roads than this."
Working all day long with his old horse, removing obstructions, draining out the culverts, filling ruts and holes with new stone, and repairing the damage of rain and storm, the road-worker was filled with a world of practical information covering roads and road-making. And having learned that I was of the same calling, we exchanged views with the greatest enthusiasm.
I'm going to present them to you for I haven't seen anybody in a long time that I've enjoyed meeting more than I have you." We nurse a fiction that people love to cover up their feelings; but I have learned that if the feeling is real and deep they love far better to find a way to uncover it. "Same here," said the road-worker simply, but with a world of genuine feeling in his voice.
And from time to time all night long, it seemed to me, I could hear the rush of cars going by in the smooth road outside, and sometimes their lights flashed in at my window, and sometimes I heard them sound their brassy horns. I wish I could tell more of what I saw there, of the garden back of the house, and of all the road-worker and his wife told me of their simple history but, the road calls!
"Well," I responded after considering the question, "I have a very long and hard section. It begins at a place called Prosy Common do you know it? and reaches to the top of Clear Hill. There are several bad spots on the way, I can tell you." "Don't know it," said the husky road-worker; "'tain't round here, is it? In the town of Sheldon, maybe?"
"Why is it, I'd like to know, that every one wants to run in the same identical track when they've got the whole wide road before 'em?" "That's what has long puzzled me, too," I said. "Why WILL people continue to run in ruts?" "It don't seem to do no good to put up signs," said the road-worker.
"That's what our supervisor is always sayin'," said the road-worker. "Yes," I responded, "it usually is the supervisor. He lives by it. He wants to smooth over the defects, he wants to lay the dust that every passerby kicks up, he tries to smear over the truth regarding conditions with messy and ill-smelling oil.
If I had not been so much in earnest, I think I should have been tempted to laugh outright. I felt as though I held a live human soul in my hand. "Say, partner," said the road-worker, "are you sure you aren't " He tapped his forehead and began to edge away. I did not answer his question at all, but continued, with my eyes fixed on him: "It is a peculiar sort of blindness.
I decided at that moment, to have him invite me to supper. Finally, when I showed no signs of stopping my work, he himself paused and leaned on his shovel. I kept right on. "Say, partner," said he, finally, "did YOU read those signs as you come up the road?" "Yes," I said, "but they weren't for me, either. My section's a long one, too." "Say, you ain't a road-worker, are you?" he asked eagerly.
Well, when it came time to stop work the road-worker insisted that I get in and go home with him. "I want you to see my wife and kids," said he. The upshot of it was that I not only remained for supper and a good supper it was but I spent the night in his little home, close at the side of the road near the foot of a fine hill.
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