JUNE RAINS— HAYING— HARVEST 203 



still in very rough condition, and that in his opinion 

 Roddy McMahon got over the ground too quickly. 

 However that may have been, it is certain that he 

 got through more work in that first season than in 

 any succeeding year ; but my own idea is that the 

 weed of two years' seeding choked the land, and 

 hindered the miserable plough. Here and there it 

 just scratched the undulating land in the dips, 

 leaving the seed-bed shallow in places, and a lot 

 of extra work for disc and harrows. In constant 

 accompaniment to some excellent work, my brother 

 grumbled. He confounded the disc, the harrows, 

 the horses, the mosquitoes all in a breath, but to the 

 furthest of all possible limits under the sun he 

 confounded my cooking. 



I didn't condescend to stand up for myself about 

 the cooking, but I said that Roddy McMahon, who 

 at least knew his business, did awfully good work on 

 the implements, and considered the horses the best 

 team in the neighbourhood. 



" Mac could plough with an old nail and disc 

 with a hairpin," he said scathingly. " Not an 

 implement, not a solitary thing, on the whole place 

 is complete. Where there should be well-fitting 

 bolts and nuts I find bits of wire, hairpins, bits of 

 string ! Anything does for Mac." 



" Well then he has resource, you must allow," I 

 claimed. 



" Resource ! There is such a thing as too much 

 resource. Sometimes I think I almost dislike 

 resourceful people. It is all very well to be able 

 to fall back on an alternative, but your resourceful 

 people always seem to select the alternative. I don't 

 profess to know anything about implements, and I 



