“If some of those Boy Scouts could only see this!” exclaimed Doctor Joe.

“’Twere fashioned by the Almighty for comfortable livin’,” said Thomas, who had called Margaret and the boys and come out unobserved by Doctor Joe.  “There’s no better shelter on the coast, and no better place for seals and salmon, with neighbours handy when we wants to see un, and plenty o’ room to stretch.  ’Tis the finest I ever saw, whatever.”

“Yes, ’tis all of that,” agreed Doctor Joe.  “But I wasn’t thinking now of The Jug alone.  I was thinking of the majestic grandeur of the whole scene.  I was enjoying the freedom from the noise and scramble, the dirt and smoke and smudge of the city, with its piles upon piles of ugly buildings, and never a breath of such pure air as this to be breathed.  I was thinking of these fine young chaps, the Boy Scouts I saw there, who are trying to study God’s big out-of-doors and must content themselves with stingy little parks.  It’s the love of Nature that takes them to the parks, and compared with this they have a poor substitute.  This is the world as God made it, with all its primordial beauty.  We’re fortunate that circumstances placed us here, Thomas, and we should be for ever thankful.”

“I’m wonderin’ now,” observed Thomas, as he and Doctor Joe paced up and down the gravelly beach, “why folks ever lives in such places as you tells about.  There’s plenty o’ room down here on The Labrador, and plenty o’ other places, I’m not doubtin’, where they’d be free from the crowds and dirt, and have plenty o’ room to stretch, and live fine like we lives.”

“We’re a thousand miles from a railway,” said Doctor Joe.  “Most of the people in the cities wouldn’t live a thousand paces from a railway if they could help themselves.  They take a car and ride if they’ve only half a mile to go.  They ride so much they’ve almost forgotten how to walk.  They like crowds.  They’d be lonesome if they were away from them.”

“’Tis strange, wonderful strange, how some folks lives,” remarked Thomas, quite astonished that any could prefer the city to his own big, free Labrador.  “When folks has enough to keep un busy they never gets lonesome, and bein’ idle is like wastin’ a part of life.  A man could never be lonesome where there’s plenty o’ water and woods about.  I always finds jobs a-plenty to turn my hand to, and I has no time to feel lonesome.  And I never could live where I didn’t have room enough to stretch, whatever.”

“That’s it!” Doctor Joe spoke decisively.  “Room enough to stretch mind as well as body.  Why, Thomas, I’ve often heard men say that they had to ‘kill time’, and didn’t know what to do with themselves for hours together!”

“’Tis wicked and against the Lord’s will,” and Thomas shook his head.  “The Lord never wants folks to be idle or kill time.  He fixes it so there’s a-plenty of useful things for everybody to do all the time, and they wants to do un.”