I don't dare rake our lawn, because the minute I start, out will come a lot of bolders, leaving terrific yawns in the sod. I'm sure the Duke will forgive me for getting peeved about that lawn, when he understands that there are callouses in my hands and knots in my lawn mower. Also, why on earth, after throwing on the grass seed, do the men drive wagons over it and make ruts and jam their heels into it and make holes, where my vagrant sprinklings with the hose create lakes and puddles and produce never a single grass?
With a little preliminary exercise, pushing the big road-roller on Garrison avenue and shoving marble blocks out of the Courthouse, I tackled our lawn with a new mower, put together by myself in accordance with instructions. Our lawn mower is painted a beautiful green on the blades, to keep out the rust. Also, it was never intended to cut. It would never do, in an emergency, to shave with.
Musically, our lawn mower for the first ten feet sang to my soul a song of sweet, rural peace and contentment.
Then it struck a snag and changed the tune.
In the course of two dashes I discovered that the spectacle of a bald-headed front-yard farmer trotting up and down behind a lawn mower was a thing to make acquaintance with. Two men I'd never seen in my life stopped and gazed at me, and one of them asked me if I was mowing my lawn. A little girl came by and stood cross-legged with her finger in her mouth, and, when I looked her way, snickered and ran home to tell her mother what a strange sight she had seen. Our grocer lingered to remark that it was a hot afternoon, and as if in confirmation of his remarkable perspicuity a lake of sweat fell like a cloudburst from my brow and drowned a hill of ants.
"Don't work so hard," said my wife, as I made another turn. "Why don't you take it easy?"
"I am taking it easy," I replied. "All I need now is a leather chair and a highball to look like the Maryland Club in repose!"
Sarcasm is one of my strong points, and my wife realized that she had goaded me into sharp retort, so she giggled at me and ran to the telephone to tell her mother that Henry was perfectly crazy about his new lawn mower and couldn't leave it alone for a minute.