t if the mood seized him. Denied the opportunity he knew he
would have fretted. There was one singular, inexplicable thing about
work. If there was work at hand, one could always find something else to
do, attractive and absorbing. If there wasn't work to do, the sheer
shock of it seemed to dull you into mental vacuity and loose ends of time
came up and hit you in the face. Garry had written something or other
like that sarcastically in a letter.

He helped Hannah churn and sang with a soft brogue, to her abashed
delight, a song he called "The Gurgling of the Churn." He helped Hetty
milk the roan cow and sang while Hetty's apple-cheeks bloomed redder, an
exquisite folk tune of a pretty girl who milked a cow in Ireland. Later
in the summer he even helped Hughie rake the hay and had a song for that.
As Hannah said, he seemed to have songs for everything and what he
couldn't sing he could play with dazzling skill on the old piano.

"There's 'lectricity," said Hannah, "in the very air."

"I wished," grumbled Hughie, "he'd put it in the ground instid. The air
don't need it. Workin' a farm like this on shares is like goin' to a
picnic behind old Nellie and startin' late. You just know you won't git
there. What ground up here ain't worked out is hills and stones and
hollers."

Hannah sighed.

Kenny knew with regret that he might have been a helpful factor in the
work of the farm but for a number of unforeseen reasons. When he churned
the butter never came. The roan cow disliked music and kicked over the
milk-pail with inartistic persistence. The sun on the hay made his head
ache.

As for a picturesque task for which he had no song--well, he had promised
Joan to keep away from the punt when the horn beneath the willow blew for
a ferryman. He had sculled the old white-haired minister into a rock
with delight to no one but Adam Craig, who had spent a whole evening
cackling about it. He must always remember that it had not been his
fault. The rock had merely scraped the punt while he was listening with
politeness to why the old man had "doubled up" his charge and had a
church on either side of the river. And if Mr. Abbott had not risen in
gentle alarm and begun to teeter around, Kenny in an interval of frantic
excitement would not have been forced to fish him out of the stream by
his coattails. He considered always that he saved the old man's life.
Nor had he meant to dab at him with the oar, thereby encou