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It was left for the tail-enders of the company to draw trousers that were six inches too long or too short, and blouses that either wouldn't reach around, and left yawning chasms in front, or were so large that they looked as if they were hung on bean-poles. Of course, Si couldn't be expected to do any more plodding farm work, now that he had "jined" the army.
"So the story got round that there was a woman kep' private in Cap'n Brown's house, and that he brought her from furrin parts; and it growed and growed, till there was all sorts o' ways o' tellin on 't. "Some said they'd seen her a settin' at an open winder. Some said that moonlight nights they'd seen her a walkin' out in the back garden kind o' in and out 'mong the bean-poles and squash-vines.
She stopped him with a haughty look. "An' in course," said he, "I don't know, neither. But it dews make me feel dreadful t' think I've started sech a rank bean-pole farm as this, when I've all'as told ye, my little gal, 't we'd ort'er use moderation" Captain Leezur wiped his blessed shining eyes "moderation in all things, even in passnips I have said an' neow I change it to bean-poles."
"Ye can slit yeer face all up and think ye're laughing, ye can, but be the time ye'd struck a few t'ousand o' these bean-poles and clothes-line props that Torrance here calls a threstle, ye'd be looking like a pin-cushion dress-making day. It's dangerous, I call it, to lave splinters like thim with their ends up.
Instead of darting back, as a sparrow, for instance, would have done, he flew up to the nearest perch; that is, to the top of the nearest bean-pole, which happened to be a lath. Wood is one of the precious metals on Cape Cod, and if oars are used for fence-rails, and fish-nets for hen-coops, why not laths for bean-poles? The perch was narrow, but wide enough for the bird's small feet.
Meantime, Schnurri, all dripping-wet, ran to the shed where Battiste was shaping bean-poles for the kitchen garden. The dog rushed at Battiste, barking furiously, seized him by the trousers, and tried to pull him along. "Something is amiss," said the man to himself; and taking a long bean-pole on his shoulder, in case it should be needed, he followed Schnurri to the wash-house.
The two symmetrical linden trees were the proudest things in the garden. Their sweetness embalmed all the air. At every turn of the paths, whether one went to see the hollyhocks or the bleeding heart, or to look at the purple morning-glories that ran over the bean-poles, wherever one went, the sweetness of the lindens struck one afresh and one always came back to them.
I could hardly have missed hearing something rememberable. Yet I may have done wisely to keep the road. Industry like his ought never to be intruded upon lightly. Some, I dare say, would have called the sight pathetic. To me it was rather inspiring. Only a day or two before, in another part of the township, I had seen a man sitting in a chair among his bean-poles picking beans.
He was the attorney of the indigenous plants, and owned to a preference of the weeds to the imported plants, as of the Indian to the civilized man, and noticed, with pleasure, that the willow bean-poles of his neighbor had grown more than his beans.
And, ever since the unfolding of the first bud, a multitude of humming-birds had been attracted thither. At times, it seemed as if for every one of the hundred blossoms there was one of these tiniest fowls of the air, a thumb's bigness of burnished plumage, hovering and vibrating about the bean-poles.
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