"Thoroughly happy, my dear fellow--as a marriage, you understand. I wouldn't undo it for the world. My people are everything to me. They are too much to me, hence my everlasting worry over life insurance. But it is not possible for the average woman to understand, and nearly every woman is the average woman. But my worries are over now. I am to start out anew. Don't think ill of me for not having opened my eyes sooner. An eye is like a chestnut bur; it doesn't open till it is ripe, and up to this time mine has been green in ignorance. Don't call me eccentric. I would rather be called a thief than eccentric. What is eccentricity but a loose joint, a flaw in the machinery? I am not so much out of the common. The trouble is that I show effects more plainly perhaps than other men. But I am serious. I am not light. To the plodder, I have been chimerical, but I will shame him by becoming a plodder, by out-plodding him. For the first time in many months, I return to my home as much as half satisfied with myself." A few days later Milford saw him in the road, popping a whip behind four bullocks. Not long afterward, at a farmyard sale, he was seen haggling for a small flock of sheep. He bought a cow of Mrs. Stuvic. He urged her to come to terms. He was a man of business, and had no time for words. "Well, now you have woke up," she said. "Who would thought it? They might as well go out to the graveyard now and tell the rest of 'em it's time to get up. Gracious alive, take the cow. I don't want to stand in the way of a man that's just woke up. Have you quit the mill?" "No, but since I woke up I do my work in about two-thirds of the time." "Good for you! Oh, that feller Milford has stirred up the whole country." "And when he gets through with that farm, madam, I'll take it. I don't think he'll stay a great while longer." "Why, has he said anythin' about goin' away?" "No, but with my shrewd eye I can see that he's getting restless. But I have no time to talk to you."