front porch represents the house, the barn, the chicken yard and the various outbuildings. Very well. Let him get tradition out of his mind, and, instead of building these things in the center of his ten acres, let him build them on the three acres of fringe. And let him plant his fruit and shade trees and berry bushes on the fringe. When you come to consider it, the traditionary method of erecting the buildings in the center of a rectangular ten acres compels him to plow around the center in broken rectangles.»
Gulhuss nodded enthusiastically. «Sure. And there's always the roadway from the center out to the county road or right of way. That breaks the efficiency of his plowing. Break ten acres into the consequent smaller rectangles, and it's expensive cultivation.»
«Wish navigation was as automatic,» was Captain Lester's contribution.
«Or portrait painting,» laughed Rita Wainwright with a significant glance at Mr. Deacon.
«Or musical criticism,» Lute remarked, with no glance at all, but with a pointedness of present company that brought from O'Hay:
«Or just being a charming young woman.»
«What price for the outfit?» Jeremy Braxton asked.
«Right now, we could manufacture and lay down, at a proper profit, for five hundred. If the thing came into general use, with up to date, large-scale factory methods, three hundred. But say five hundred. And write off fifteen per cent, for interest and constant, it would cost the farmer seventy dollars a year. What ten-acre farmer, on two– hundred-dollar land, who keeps books, can keep a horse for seventy dollars a year? And on top of that, it would save him, in labor, personal or hired, at the abjectest minimum, two hundred dollars a year.»
«But what guides it?» Rita asked.
«The drum on the post. The drum is graduated for the complete radius— which took some tall figuring, I assure you—and the cable, winding around the drum and shortening, draws the tractor in toward the center.»
«There are lots of objections to its general introduction, even among small farmers,» Gulhuss said.
Dick nodded affirmation.
«Sure,» he replied. «I have over forty noted down and classified. And I've as many more for the machine itself. If the thing is a success, it will take a long time to perfect it and introduce it.»
Graham found himself divided between watching the circling tractor and casting glances at the picture Paula Forrest was on her mount. It was her first day on The Fawn, which was the Palomina mare Hennessy had trained for her. Graham smiled with secret approval of her femininity; for Paula, whether she had designed her habit for the mare, or had selected one most peculiarly appropriate, had achieved a triumph.
In place of a riding coat, for the afternoon was warm, she wore a tan linen blouse with white turnback collar. A short skirt, made like the lower part of a riding coat, reached the knees, and from knees to entrancing little bespurred champagne boots tight riding trousers showed. Skirt and trousers were of fawn-colored silk corduroy. Soft white gauntlets on her hands matched with the collar in the one emphasis of color. Her head was bare, the hair done tight and low around her ears and nape of neck.
«I don't see how you can keep such a skin and expose yourself to the sun this way,» Graham ventured, in mild criticism.
«I don't,» she smiled with a dazzle of white teeth. «That is, I don't expose my face this way more than a few times a year. I'd like to, because I love the sun-gold burn in my hair; but I don't dare a thorough tanning.»
The mare frisked, and a breeze of air blew back a flap of skirt, showing an articulate knee where the trouser leg narrowed tightly over it. Again Graham visioned the white round of knee pressed into the round muscles of the swimming Mountain Lad, as he noted the firm knee– grip on her pigskin English saddle, quite new and fawn-colored to match costume and horse.
When the magneto on the tractor went wrong, and the mechanics busied themselves with it in the midst of the partly plowed field, the company, under Paula's guidance, leaving Dick behind with his invention, resolved itself into a pilgrimage among the brood-centers on the way to the swimming tank. Mr. Crellin, the hog-manager, showed them Lady Isleton, who, with her prodigious, fat, recent progeny of eleven, won various naГЇve encomiums, while Mr. Crellin warmly proclaimed at least four times, «And not a runt, not a runt, in the bunch.»
Other glorious brood-sows, of Berkshire, Duroc-Jersey, and O. I. C. blood, they saw till they were wearied, and new-born kids and lambs, and rotund does and ewes. From center to center, Paula kept the telephones warning ahead of the party's coming, so that Mr. Manson waited to exhibit the great King Polo, and his broad-backed Shorthorn harem, and the Shorthorn harems of bulls that were only little less than King Polo in magnificence and record; and Parkman, the Jersey manager, was on hand, with staffed assistants, to parade Sensational Drake, Golden Jolly, Fontaine Royal, Oxford Master, and Karnak's Fairy Boy—blue ribbon bulls, all, and founders and scions of noble houses of butter-fat renown, and Rosaire Queen, Standby's Dam, Golden Jolly's Lass, Olga's Pride, and Gertie of Maitlands—equally blue-ribboned and blue-blooded Jersey matrons in the royal realm of butter-fat; and Mr. Mendenhall, who had charge of the Shires, proudly exhibited a string of mighty stallions, led by the mighty Mountain Lad, and a longer string of matrons, headed by the Fotherington Princess of the silver whinny. Even old Alden Bessie, the Princess's dam, retired to but part-day's work, he sent for that they might render due honor to so notable a dam.
As four o'clock approached, Donald Ware, not keen on swimming, returned in one of the machines to the Big House, and Mr. Gulhuss remained to discuss Shires with Mr. Mendenhall. Dick was at the tank when the party arrived, and the girls were immediately insistent for the new song.
«It isn't exactly a new song,» Dick explained, his gray eyes twinkling roguery, «and it's not my song. It was sung in Japan before I was born, and, I doubt not, before Columbus discovered America. Also, it is a duet—a competitive duet with forfeit penalties attached. Paula will have to sing it with me.—I'll teach you. Sit down there, that's right.—Now all the rest of you gather around and sit down.»
Still in her riding habit, Paula sat down on the concrete, facing her husband, in the center of the sitting audience. Under his direction, timing her movements to his, she slapped her hands on her knees, slapped her palms together, and slapped her palms against his palms much in the fashion of the nursery game of «Bean Porridge Hot.» Then he sang the song, which was short and which she quickly picked up, singing it with him and clapping the accent. While the air of it was orientally catchy, it was chanted slowly, almost monotonously, but it was quickly provocative of excitement to the spectators:
«Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena,
Jong-Jong, Keena-Keena,
Yo-ko-ham-a, Nag-a-sak-i,
Kobe-mar-o—hoy!!! »
The last syllable,
«My forfeit,» he explained. «Come on, Paul, again.» And again they sang and clapped:
«Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena,
Jong-Jong, Keena-Keena,
Yo-ko-ham-a, Nag-a-sak-i,
Kobe-mar-o—hoy!!! »
This time, with the
«Forfeit!—forfeit!» the girls cried.
She looked her costume over with alarm, asking, «What can I give?»
«A hair pin,» Dick advised; and one of her turtleshell hair pins joined his hat in Lute's lap.
«Bother it!» she exclaimed, when the last of her hair pins had gone the same way, she having failed seven times to Dick's once. «I can't see why I should be so slow and stupid. Besides, Dick, you're too clever. I never could out-guess you or out-anticipate you.»
Again they sang the song. She lost, and, to Mrs. Tully's shocked «Paula!» she forfeited a spur and threatened a boot when the remaining spur should be gone. A winning streak of three compelled Dick to give up his wrist watch and both spurs. Then she lost her wrist watch and the remaining spur.
