174 WHEAT AND WOMAN 



cultural labour. He believed in implements, and 

 was most anxious to attack my flower-beds with the 

 plough. He ploughed, disced, and harrowed the 

 potato-patch, and then he made a very deep furrow 

 with the plough and I ran behind and dropped in 

 the potatoes ; the second time round we covered 

 one row and prepared the seed-bed for the next 

 and so on until the plot was seeded. Then the 

 surface was harrowed again, and my leader and guide 

 said that we had fixed the potatoes all right and 

 returned to the breaking, whilst I returned to 

 my spade. By the afternoon of May 23 I had 

 got through about a quarter of my task when I 

 went in to get supper for him and for Mabel Mazey, 

 who was spending her last afternoon with me, 

 her duties on the land having recommenced in 

 earnest. Being the eve of x^j first Victoria Day on 

 the prairie it is excusable that my sense of the 

 holiday question was undeveloped. I had made 

 an ignoble compact with 'the man that holidays 

 should be ignored until the dream of the break- 

 ing of fifty acres was an accomplished fact. I 

 served the meal on the veranda, and shared it 

 with him and my neighbour's daughter, who had so 

 often played the Good Samaritan in piloting me 

 through the weekly half-day of more violent 

 exertions upon which the order of my house 

 depended. 



" You ain't comin' down to the picnic to-morrow ! 

 My, but that's too bad ! " I heard the Good 

 Samaritan exclaim, as I turned the corner, with the 

 chief supper-dish of poached eggs and fried potatoes. 



" No," he answered. " I didn't make out to take 

 no holiday before we was through with the breakin'. 



