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Updated: June 11, 2025
Jeminy, bending over, "are rotted from the wet weather." "To-morrow," said Mr. Tomkins, "I'll borrow a harrow from Farmer Barly. And next spring I'll plant corn here on the hill. Then we'll have a corn-husking, Jeminy; you and I, and the rest of the young ones." And he burst out laughing, in his high, cracked voice. "Do you remember the last corn-husking?" asked Mr. Jeminy.
But later a feeling of peace took possession of his heart. "Yes," he said, "I am an old man. The world is not my affair any more. I belong to yesterday, with its triumphs and its failures; I must share in the glory, such as it is, of what has been done. The future is in the hands of this child, sound asleep by my side. It is in your hands, Anna Barly, and yours, Thomas Frye.
But gradually, as the afternoon shadows began to lengthen, he grew sad. It seemed to him as if the world, strange and contrary during the day, were again as it used to be when he was young. When he crossed the wooden bridge over Barly Water, the minnows, frightened, fled away in shoals. Mr. Jeminy turned down toward the village, where he had an errand to attend to.
A fortnight later, the dress-maker was called in haste to Barly Farm, to sew coarse and fine linen, and a dress for Anna to be married in. But it all had to be done within the week, towels, sheets, pillow-cases, table-cloths, and aprons. "More than a body could sew in a month," she declared. For Anna was going to have a baby. "Do what you can," said Mrs.
Jeminy, unheeding the sighs of his housekeeper, continued: "But after all, I would not change places with Farmer Barly. For riches are a source of trouble, Mrs. Grumble; they crowd love out of the heart. A man is only to be envied who desires little." "It is always the same," said Mrs. Grumble; "the rich have their pleasures, and the poor people their sorrows." "That," said Mr.
Jeminy was told that Thomas Frye and Anna Barly were to be married, he exclaimed: "What a shame. "Yes," he continued with energy, "what a shame, Mrs. Grumble. They did as they were bid. Now they know that love is a trap to catch the young, and tie them up once and for all, close to the kitchen sink." "No one bade them do what they'd no right to do," said Mrs. Grumble. "They did," replied Mr.
Barly, in a shaking voice, "yes . . . wait . . . you'll see a bit of something . . . a taste of the broom, perhaps. . . ." While the two women looked after the house, the hired men worked in the fields, under the hot sun, their wet, cotton shirts open at the neck, their faces shaded with wide straw hats. Farmer Barly leaned against one side of a tumbled-down wooden fence, and old Mr.
After breakfast, Anna helped her mother with the housework. She took a hand in making the beds, and put her own room in order by tumbling everything into the closet and shutting the door. Then she went into the kitchen to help with the lunch. When Mrs. Barly saw her dreaming over the carrots, she asked: "What are you gaping at now?" "Nothing." Then Mrs. Barly grew vexed.
It was easy to see that he was an honest man; he kept his shop tidy, and was sour to everybody. Through his square spectacles he saw his neighbors in the form of fruits, vegetables, stick pins, and pieces of calico. Of Mr. Jeminy he used to say: "Sweet apples, but small, very small; small and sweet." "Yes," said Farmer Barly, "but just tell me, who wants small apples?" Mr. Frye nodded his head.
Jeminy raised his head to the sky, in which the first stars of night were to be seen. "I am very busy now," he said, proudly. From her dormer window, Anna Barly peered out at the wet, gray morning. The ground was sopping, the trees black with the night's drenching. In the orchard a sparrow sang an uncertain song; and she heard the comfortable drip, drip, drip from the eaves.
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