Dad flicked the whip at Brownie with a nervous energy; he was “in a bit of a rush to get home.” Always full of nervous energy was Dad, and more often than not “in a bit of a rush.” He was a delicate man, who had survived, Mother alone knows how many “bad turns,” and he was often ailing and irritable, but never without a certain dash and vigour. “More pluck than bulk,” a neighbour once summed him up, and, “You’d think he’d a fire inside of him,” agreed one of the listeners. Suppose it was so, then this fire had two flames—a love of music, and a passion for the soil.
The latter was paramount and urging. Dad, without capital, and with a numerous family, of which the eldest were but just emerging from school age, had nevertheless, some few years previously, managed, at last, to take up a bit of land; by dint of stern determination had ploughed and fenced and got it into some kind of going order; then, with the same sternness, had torn himself away from it. It needed money; that money he must make. The children were now growing up; they could manage things between them, and he would go back to town and earn. Accordingly, for the sake of his heart’s delight, he banished himself from the sight of it all week long, and served in a grocery store, hurrying home, each Saturday night and every chance holiday, to take a general survey, and issue orders. Mother would not leave him—of all her children he was the one who needed looking after most. “So he’s bachelorisin’, an’ I’m keepin’ house for him,” she would explain, with a twinkle. And “the children” managed the farm.
