College was over; and Gregor Nikolaieff went up to San Francisco to ship on one of the vessels of the “canning fleet,” which went up to Alaska to catch and pack salmon. Rachel Menzies and her brother joined three other Jewish students who had equipped themselves with a battered Ford car, to follow the fruit-picking; moving from place to place, sleeping under the stars, and gathering apricots, peaches, prunes and grapes for the canners and driers. Bunny was the only one of the little group of “reds” who did not have to work all summer; and he was the only one who didn’t know what to do with himself. In the old days, when he and Dad were drilling one well at a time, Bunny would pitch in and help at anything there was to do; he was only a “kid” then, and the men liked it. But now he was of age, and supposed to be dignified; the company was of age, too, a huge machine in which every cog had its place, and must not be interfered with. Bunny could not even cultivate the plants at home without trespassing on the job of the gardener! He had resolved to study some of Paul’s books; but he had never heard of anyone studying eight hours a day, and he couldn’t take Paul’s job for part of the time, because he wasn’t a good enough carpenter! It was a world in which some people worked all the time, and others played all the time. To work all the time was a bore, and no one would do it unless he had to; but to play all the time was equally a bore, and the people who did it never had anything to talk about that Bunny wanted to listen to. They talked about their play, just as solemnly as if it had been work: tennis tournaments, golf tournaments, polo matches—all sorts of complicated ways of hitting a little ball about a field! Now, it was all right, when you needed exercise and recreation, to go out and hit a little ball; but to make a life-work of it, to give all your time and thought to it, to practice it religiously, read and write books about it, discuss it for hours on end—Bunny looked at these fully grown men and women, with their elaborate outfits of “sport clothes,” and it seemed to him they must be exercising a kind of hypnosis upon themselves, to make themselves believe that they were really enjoying their lives. VII