The Brimming Cup

"I'm ashamed to show you how dumb I am about the use of these tools," he

told her, laughing shamefacedly. "I don't suppose you'll believe me, but

honestly I never had a pick-mattock in my hand till I went down to the

store to buy one. I might as well go the whole hog and confess I'd never

even heard of one till you told me to get it. Is this the way you use

it?" He jabbed ineffectually at the earth with the mattock, using a

short tight blow with a half-arm movement. The tool jarred itself half

an inch into the ground and was almost twisted out of his hand.

"No, not quite," she said, taking the heavy tool out of his hand. If she

were aware of the idle figure at the upper window, she gave no sign of

it. She laid her strong, long, flexible hands on the handle, saying,

"So, you hold it this way. Then you swing it up, back of your head.

There's a sort of knack to that. You'll soon catch it. And then, if the

ground isn't very hard, you don't need to use any strength at all on the

downward stroke. Let Old Mother Gravity do the work. If you aim it

right, its own weight is enough for ordinary garden soil, that's not in

sod. Now watch."

She swung the heavy tool up, shining in the bright air, all her tall,

supple body drawn up by the swing of her arms, cried out, "See, now I

relax and just let it fall," and bending with the downward rush of the

blade, drove it deep into the brown earth. A forward thrust of the long

handle ("See, you use it like a lever," she explained), a small

earthquake in the soil, and the tool was free for another stroke.

At her feet was a pool of freshly stirred fragments of earth, loose,

friable, and moist, from which there rose in a gust of the spring

breeze, an odor unknown to the old man and thrilling.

He stooped down, thrust his hand into the open breast of earth, and took

up a handful of the soil which had lain locked in frost for half a year

and was now free for life again. Over it his eyes met those of the

beautiful woman beside him.

She nodded. "Yes, there's nothing like it, the smell of the first earth

stirred every spring."

He told her, wistfully, "It's the very first stirred in all my life."