Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/21



HE sun was shining clear. Some birds were twittering in the plum tree, white with blossoms. Pigeons drummed and cooed in the Flannigan cote, some hundred yards away. The leaves of the maple had enlarged since George was out here two hours before. Everything was astir and a-rustle. The air was warm. The earth was steaming. Seeds were popping in it. Everything—everything seemed imbued with energy save only George Judson.

Lazily he put his hand to the fork, and listlessly he pried its tines to and fro in the soil. He had placed one foot on it to thrust it downward, when his eyes fell upon the folded newspaper and recognized it. He took it up, not so much that he recalled that something in its pages had made his father start and frown, not so much as that unfolding it with delicious deliberation and gazing at each succeeding page long and curiously offered valid excuse for further postponement of entry upon his distasteful task. An illustration, the picture of a cheap-looking wagon, yet with something unmistakably odd about it, had caught his eye, when a sound from the roadside path just over the garden fence