"'Tis the
seventeenth of April, so we may git ahead with plantin'," he remarked.
"Ah, well, it's a fine early spring an' puts me in mind of seventy years
ago when I was courtin'. Thar ain't many men, I reckon, that can
enjoy lookin' back on a courtin' seventy years after it is over. 'Tis
surprisin' how some things sweeten with age, an' memory is one of 'em."
Reuben merely nodded after him as he went, for he had grown too tired
to answer. A curious stillness--half happiness, half indifference--was
stealing over him, and he watched as in a dream, the blue figure of old
Adam hobble over the sun-flecked path through the orchard. A few minutes
later Molly flitted after the elder, and Reuben's eyes followed her with
the cheerful look with which he had faced seventy years of life. On a
rush mat in the sunshine the old hound flicked his long black ear at a
fly of which he was dreaming, and from a bower of ivy in the eaves there
came the twitter of sparrows. Beyond the orchard, the wind, blowing from
the marshes, chased the thin, sketchy shadows over the lawn at Jordan's
Journey.
While he sat there Reuben began to think, and as always, his thoughts
were humble and without self-consciousness.
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