The Farm

The grandfather and grandmother are sitting on the lawn under the maples, near the old gray-white house under the eaves of which the mud-wasps have plastered their little fawn-colored homes. It is August, and the air is very soft and hazy, and filled with the whirring of insects. In the fields the butterflies are flitting about over the delicate wild carrot, and the woods in the distance are beginning to thin out and take on a rusty appearance.

The grandfather is reading aloud to the grandmother, who is knitting — knitting very fast, with quick, regular darts of her forefinger. The grandfather puts out his hand as he reads, and strokes the shaggy Airedale terrier. He is a puppy, but he looks like an old dog, with stiff, limited motions of his hind legs, and patience in his amber eyes, which peer out from wisps of dull red-brown hair.

A bird with a downy white feather in its beak flies to the top of the apple tree; but soon the feather comes wafting slowly down. A mellow, buff-colored apple falls with a gentle thud, and a little stubbly green one topples down, brushing the tree-trunk. Over near the tennis court the pear trees are bent with the weight of their fruit, and children are playing on the green, green grass, and there is the soft pad-pad of the ball on ground, against racket.

All about us there is peace and quiet, but now a shadow passes over the grass. The turkeys under the thorny bush and the hens that are taking dust-baths in the roadway see it, and know that there is a chicken-hawk overhead, and there is an uneasy stir among them. One young turkey hen twists its glistening neck and cocks its eye apprehensively upward.

For us — the grandfather is reading an article describing the treatment of the prisoners taken by the Germans; and the grandmother, who wears a Red Cross button in place of her accustomed brooch, is knitting, knitting. And of the things that she is knitting there is already quite a little pile, and they are all ‘stump socks,’ to be worn on the ends of amputated limbs instead of gloves or stockings.