I would
have hated being a barrister, setting people by the ears and making
my living out of other people's troubles. Being a farmer you feel
that in doing good to yourself you are doing good all round. Miss
Janie agrees with all I say. I think she is one of the most sensible
girls I have ever come across, and Robin likes her awfully. So is
the old man: he's a brick. I think he has taken a liking to me, and
I know I have to him. He's the dearest old fellow imaginable. The
very turnips he seems to think of as though they were so many rows of
little children. And he makes you see the inside of things. Take
fields now, for instance. I used to think a field was just a field.
You scraped it about and planted it with seeds, and everything else
depended on the weather. Why, Dad, it's alive! There are good
fields that want to get on--that are grateful for everything you do
for them, and take a pride in themselves. And there are brutes of
fields that you feel you want to kick. You can waste a hundred
pounds' worth of manure on them, and it only makes them more stupid
than they were before. One of our fields--a wizened-looking eleven-
acre strip bordering the Fyfield road--he has christened Mrs.
Gummidge: it seems to feel everything more than any other field.
From whatever point of the compass the wind blows that field gets the
most harm from it. You would think to look at it after a storm that
there hadn't been any rain in any other field--that that 'particular
field must have got it all; while two days' sunshine has the effect
upon it that a six weeks' drought would on any other field.
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