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Why, man, such carles as thou and I can hardly be called better than old hemlocks, decayed nettles, or withered rag-weed; but I suppose you think that we are still worth watering." "I am an old soldier, sir, I thank Heaven hiccup" "An old skinker, you mean, John. But come, never mind, show me the way to your mistress, old lad."
He had been mad to admit to himself, much less to his Rag-weed, that there was any doubt of this outcome. It might take a few more days, a week, not longer than that. But what should he do when Rose gave the message to him? Could he go away with her? This bothered him for a while. Of course, he would have to. He could not send his wife away. The community would not tolerate this.
Not being dressed with coal- ashes, however, during the winter, the sidewalk vanished next summer under a growth of rag-weed, and hid the increased values with it, and it is now an even question whether this monument of municipal grandeur will finally be held by Art or resumed by Nature, who indeed has a perpetual motherly longing for her own, and may be seen in all outlying and suburban places, pathetically striving to steal back any neglected bits of ground and conceal them under her skirts of tattered and shabby verdure.
There are umber-colored patches of fresh-turned furrows; here and there the mossy, luxurious verdure of new-springing rye; gray stubble; the ragged brown of discolored, frost-bitten rag-weed; next, a line of tree-tops, thickening as they drop to the near bed of a river, and beyond the river-basin showing again, with tufts of hemlock among naked oaks and maples; then roofs, cupolas; ambitious lookouts of suburban houses, spires, belfries, turrets: all these commingling in a long line of white, brown, and gray, which in sunny weather is backed by purple hills, and flanked one way by a shining streak of water, and the other by a stretch of low, wooded mountains that turn from purple to blue, and so blend with the northern sky.
The Tournament prizes are exhibited in the windows of the leading furniture emporium at the corner of Main and Center, each with a card attached bearing the name of the donor in distinctly legible characters. Old man Hagerman has been mowing all the rag-weed and cuckle-burrs along the line of march, and the lawns have had an unusual amount of shaving and sprinkling.
The plough went not out; the herds wandered through broken hedges from field to field and came up with staring bones and shrunken sides; a frenzied mob of weeds and thorns wrestled and throttled each other in a struggle for standing-room rag-weed, smart-weed, sneeze-weed, bindweed, iron-weed until the burning skies of midsummer checked their growth and crowned their unshorn tops with rank and dingy flowers.
There was but one thing worth while his farm. He would develop it to its limits. Accordingly, when little Rose returned to Sharon, he and his Rag-weed soon settled themselves to the old formula of endless toil, investing the profits in sound farm mortgages that were beginning to tax the capacity of his huge tin box in the vault of the First State Bank.
When we came home that day my father and mother held a long council over us and finally called us in and father said "I have tried to make something out of you but you will never be anything but a blockheads and I might as well make good indians out of you as poor ones." so he allowed us to use our guns smoke and chew rag-weed to our hearts content.
He turned his head toward the kitchen where his Rag-weed was working and asked himself if she were gone and some other woman were here such as little Rose might be when she grew up, one to whom he went out spontaneously, would not his life be more complete and far more worth while? What a fool he was, to bother his head with such get-nowhere questions!
It was flying, flying in a few more years he would be fifty. Fifty! And what had it all been about, anyway? He did have this farm to show for his work he had not made a bad job of that, he and his Rag-weed. In her own fashion she was a good sort, and better looking than most women past forty.
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