pe. The
original dream of Miss Francis would pale compared with the reality.
There was still--somewhere, somehow--a fortune in the Metamorphizer....

Ready at last, Mr Barelli walked delicately across the stubble as if it
were a substance too precious to be trampled brutally. Again he measured
the rippling, ascending mass with his eye. It was the look of a
bridegroom.

"What you waitin for?"

Unheeding, he scraped bootwelt semicircularly on the sward as though to
mark a stance. Once more he appraised the grass, crooked his knee,
rested his hands lightly on the two short, upraised handholds. Satisfied
at length with his preparations, he finally drew the scythe back with a
sweeping motion of both arms and curved it forward close to the ground.
It embraced a sudden island lovingly and a sheaf of grass swooned into a
heap. I was reminded of old woodcuts in a history of the French
Revolution.

The bystanders sighed in harmony. "Nothing to it ... should a had him in
the first place ... can't beat the old elbowgrease. No, sir,
musclepower'll do it every time ... guess it's licked now all right, all
right...." Mr Barelli duplicated his sweep and another sheaf fell.
Another. And another....

"One of the oldest human rituals," remarked Miss Francis, swaying her
body in time with the farmer's. "An act of devotion to Ceres. But all
this husbandman reaps is _Cynodon dactylon_. A commentary."

"Progress," I pointed out. "Now they have machines to harvest grain. All
uptodate farmers use them; only the backward ones stick to primitive
tools and have to make a living by taking on odd jobs."

"Progress," she repeated, looking from the scythewielder to me and back
again. "Progress, Weener. A remarkable conception of the nineteenth
century...."

The less intense spectators began to move off; not, to be sure, without
backward glances, but the metronomic swing of Mr Barelli's blade
indicated it was all over with the rank grass now. I too should have
been on my way, writing off the Metamorphizer as a total loss and
considering methods for making a new and more profitable connection. Not
that I was one to leave a sinking ship, nor had I lost faith in the
potentialities of Miss Francis' discovery; but she either wasnt smart
enough to modify her formula, or else ... but there really wasnt any "or
else". She just wasnt smart enough to make the Metamorphizer marketable
and she was cheating me of the handsome return which should be
right