d enough to be valuable nor useful enough to keep. I spent a long
day--one of the longest days of my life--browsing through the books, trying
to sort the photographs, and glancing through a few old letters. I did
nothing in particular with anything, and in the late afternoon I roused
myself, put them all back, and shut the glass doors. I had nothing to show
for my day's experience except a deep little round ache in the back of my
neck and a faint brassy taste in my mouth. I complained of it to Jonathan
later.

"It always tasted just that way to me when I was a boy," he said, "but I
never thought much about it--I thought it was just a closet-taste."

"And it isn't only the taste," I went on. "It does something to me, to my
state of mind. I'm afraid to try the garret."

"Garrets are different," said Jonathan. "But I'd leave them. They can
wait."

"They've waited a good while, of course," I said.

And so we left the garrets. We came back to them later, and were glad we
had done so. But that is a story by itself.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, in the evenings, Jonathan helped.

"I'm afraid you were more or less right about the odd jobs," I admitted
one night. "They do seem to accumulate." I was holding a candle while he
set up a loose latch.

"They've been accumulating a good many years," said Jonathan.

"Yes, that's it. And so the doors all stick, and the latches won't latch,
and the shades are sulky or wild, and the pantry shelves--have you
noticed?--they're all warped so they rock when you set a dish on them."

"And the chairs pull apart," added Jonathan.

"Yes. Of course after we catch up we'll be all right."

"I wouldn't count too much on catching up."

"Why not?" I asked.

"The farm has had a long start."

"But you're a Yankee," I argued; "the Yankee nature fairly feeds on such
jobs--'putter jobs,' you know."

"Yes, I know."

"Only, of course, you get on faster if you're not too particular about
having the exact tool--"

Considered as a Yankee, Jonathan's only fault is that when he does a job
he likes to have a very special tool to do it with. Often it is so special
that I have never heard its name before and then I consider he is going
too far. He merely thinks I haven't gone far enough. Perhaps such matters
must always remain matters of opinion. But even with this handicap we did
begin to catch up, and we could have done this a good deal faster if it
had not been for t