“Don’t worrit, dear heart,” Caleb consoled her. “Oi count even Samson wanted a wash arter he’d lugged that little old gate up the hill from Gazy.” CHAPTER V WILL AT HOME _Is not this the merry month of May,_ _When love-lads masken in fresh array?_ _How falls it, then, we no merrier be’n,_ _Like as others, girt in gaudy green?_ SPENSER, “The Shepheards Calendar.” I TIME hung heavy on Will’s hands the first few days of his return, as heavy as the meals heaped before him by the adoring Martha. There was as much for “bever” as for breakfast, yet quantity did not suffice him. He became almost as finnicking and fractious as Cousin Caroline, not content, for example, to strain the pond-water through muslin for the larger insects, but insisting on its being boiled: indeed hinting preposterously that the mortality among his unknown brothers and sisters might have been connected with potations on which Caleb and Martha had patently flourished. He held views on the house-refuse, ignoring Caleb’s plea that “the best drain be a pig,” and by making hinges the very first evening for the lower windows to open by, he had raised such a draught in the house that it was all they could do to keep their bedroom and their kitchen air-tight, and even Martha was glad when on the Wednesday afternoon he went off to get some fishing in the Brad, and the windows could all be closed up again. But the few dace and bull-heads that rewarded his rod left too many intervals for reflection, and in the unsettlement of his thoughts, before settling down to a judicious expenditure of his ninety pounds, he felt he needed more deadening exertion. He tried poling against the stream to that ancient faery island—somebody’s half-decked shooting punt was doing no good rusting on the bank in the off-season, he thought—but the process soon became automatic and his mind was still restless, while after the islands of the St. Lawrence this enchanted playground of his youth seemed tame and its prettiness trivial.