squashes and my poor, struggling flower-beds. Once it was a break
in the wire fence around Jonathan's muskmelon patch in the barn meadow.
The cows had just been turned in, and if it wasn't mended that evening it
meant no melons that season, also melon-tainted cream for days.

Once or twice each year it was the drainpipe from the sink. The drain,
like the pump, was an innovation. Our ancestors had always carried out
whatever they couldn't use or burn, and dumped it on the far edge of the
orchard. In a thinly settled community, there is much to be said for this
method: you know just where you are. But we had the drain, and
occasionally we didn't know just where we were.

"Coffee grounds," Jonathan would suggest, with a touch of sternness.

"No," I would reply firmly; "coffee grounds are always burned."

"What then?"

"Don't know. I've poked and poked."

A gleam in the corner of Jonathan's eye--"What with?"

"Oh, everything."

"Yes, I suppose so. For instance what?"

"Why--hair-pin first, of course, and then scissors, and then
button-hook--you needn't smile. Button-hooks are wonderful for cleaning out
pipes. And then I took a pail-handle and straightened it out--" Jonathan
was laughing by this time--"Well, I have to use what I have, don't I?"

"Yes, of course. And after the pail-handle?"

"After that--oh, yes. I tried your cleaning-rod."

"The devil you did!"

"Not at all. It wasn't hurt a bit. It just wouldn't go down, that's all.
So then I thought I'd wait for you."

"And now what do you expect?"

"I expect you to fix it."

Of course, after that, there was nothing for Jonathan to do but fix it.
Usually it did not take long. Sometimes it did. Once it took a whole
evening, and required the services of a young tree, which Jonathan went
out and cut and trimmed and forced through a section of the pipe which he
had taken up and laid out for the operation on the kitchen floor. It was a
warm evening, too, and friends had driven over to visit us. We received
them warmly in the kitchen. We explained that we believed in making them
members of the family, and that members of the family always helped in
whatever was being done. So they helped. They took turns gripping the pipe
while Jonathan and I persuaded the young tree through it. It required
great strength and some skill because it was necessary to make the tree
and the pipe perform spirally rotatory movements each antagonistic and
complementary to the other.