Kenny, at a loose end, kept the farm in ferment, evading the work Garry had sent him, by a conscientious effort to assist others.  He was glad he could paint if the mood seized him.  Denied the opportunity he knew he would have fretted.  There was one singular, inexplicable thing about work.  If there was work at hand, one could always find something else to do, attractive and absorbing.  If there wasn’t work to do, the sheer shock of it seemed to dull you into mental vacuity and loose ends of time came up and hit you in the face.  Garry had written something or other like that sarcastically in a letter.

He helped Hannah churn and sang with a soft brogue, to her abashed delight, a song he called “The Gurgling of the Churn.”  He helped Hetty milk the roan cow and sang while Hetty’s apple-cheeks bloomed redder, an exquisite folk tune of a pretty girl who milked a cow in Ireland.  Later in the summer he even helped Hughie rake the hay and had a song for that.  As Hannah said, he seemed to have songs for everything and what he couldn’t sing he could play with dazzling skill on the old piano.

“There’s ’lectricity,” said Hannah, “in the very air.”

“I wished,” grumbled Hughie, “he’d put it in the ground instid.  The air don’t need it.  Workin’ a farm like this on shares is like goin’ to a picnic behind old Nellie and startin’ late.  You just know you won’t git there.  What ground up here ain’t worked out is hills and stones and hollers.”

Hannah sighed.

Kenny knew with regret that he might have been a helpful factor in the work of the farm but for a number of unforeseen reasons.  When he churned the butter never came.  The roan cow disliked music and kicked over the milk-pail with inartistic persistence.  The sun on the hay made his head ache.

As for a picturesque task for which he had no song—­well, he had promised Joan to keep away from the punt when the horn beneath the willow blew for a ferryman.  He had sculled the old white-haired minister into a rock with delight to no one but Adam Craig, who had spent a whole evening cackling about it.  He must always remember that it had not been his fault.  The rock had merely scraped the punt while he was listening with politeness to why the old man had “doubled up” his charge and had a church on either side of the river.  And if Mr. Abbott had not risen in gentle alarm and begun to teeter around, Kenny in an interval of frantic excitement would not have been forced to fish him out of the stream by his coattails.  He considered always that he saved the old man’s life.  Nor had he meant to dab at him with the oar, thereby encouraging the unfortunate old chap to duck and misinterpret his obvious intention to save him.