"Darn the difference!" he laughed in his old way. "Besides, I've got
rubbers."
"Better go round by the fence," she advised as he stepped out into
the pouring rain.
How wretchedly familiar it all was! The miry cow yard, with the
hollow trampled out around the horse trough, the disconsolate hens
standing under the wagons and sheds, a pig wallowing across its
sty, and for atmosphere the desolate, falling rain. It was so familiar
he felt a pang of the old rebellious despair which seized him on
such days in his boyhood.
Catching up courage, he stepped out on the grass, opened the gate,
and entered the barnyard. A narrow ribbon of turf ran around the
fence, on which he could walk by clinging with one hand to the
rough boards. In this way he slowly made his way around the
periphery, and came at last to the open barn door without much
harm.
It was a desolate interior. In the open floorway Grant, seated upon
a half-bushel, was mending a harness. The old man was holding
the trace in his hard brown hands; the boy was lying on a wisp of
hay. It was a small barn, and poor at that. There was a bad smell,
as of dead rats, about it, and the rain fell through the shingles here
and there.
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