I am firm: I do not want the hens made intelligent,
or the orchard improved, or the swallows trained. There is, I am sure,
matter enough in other parts of the farm upon which one may wreak one's
optimism. I hold me to my tidy hearths, my comfortable hens, my old
lilacs, and my dreaming apple trees.

III

A Desultory Pilgrimage

Many of our friends seem to be taking automobile trips during the summer
months--very rapid trips, since, as they explain, "it strains the
machine to go too slowly, you know." Jonathan and I wanted to take a
trip too, and we looked about us on the old farm for a conveyance. The
closest scrutiny failed to discover an automobile, but there were other
vehicles--there was the old sleigh in the back of the woodshed, where
the hens loved to steal nests, and the old surrey, shabby but willing,
and the business wagon, still shabbier but no less willing; there were
the two lumber wagons, one rather more lumbering than the other; and
there were also various farming vehicles whose names and uses I have
never fathomed, with knives and long raking arrangements, very
uncomfortable to step over when hunting in the dark corners of the barns
for hens' nests or new kittens.

Moreover, there was Kit, the old bay mare, also shabby but willing. That
is, willing "within reason," although it must be admitted that Kit's
ideas of what was reasonable were distinctly conservative. The chief
practical difference between Kit and an automobile, considered as a
motive power, was that it did not strain Kit in the least to go slowly.
This we considered an advantage, slow-going being what we particularly
wished, and we decided that Kit would do.

For our conveyance we chose the business wagon--a plain box body, with a
seat across and room behind for a trunk; but in addition Jonathan put in
a shallow box under the seat, nailed to cleats on the bottom of the
wagon so that it would not shift and rain would run under it. In this we
put the things we needed by the roadside--the camping-kit,
drinking-cups, bait-boxes, camera, and so on. Then we stowed our trout
rods and baskets, and one morning in June we started.

Our plan was to drive and fish through the day, cook our own noon meal,
and put up at night wherever we could be taken in, avoiding cities and
villages as far as possible. Beyond that we had no plan. Indeed, this
was the best of it all, that we did not have to get anywhere in
particular at any particular time.