Maybe I'm a freak. But I'm proud of this place.
Barring the inevitable lonesomeness that comes now and then, I can be
happier here than any place I've ever struck yet. This country grows
on one."
"Yes--on one's nerves," Hazel retorted.
Bill smiled, and, rising, began to clear away the dishes. Hazel
resisted an impulse to help. She would not work; she would not lift
her finger to any task, she reminded herself. He had put her in her
present position, and he could wait on her. So she rested an elbow on
the table and watched him. In the midst of his work he stopped
suddenly.
"There's oceans of time to do this," he observed. "I'm just a wee bit
tired, if anybody should ask you. Let's camp in the other room. It's
a heap more comfy."
He put more wood on the kitchen fire, and set a pot of water to heat.
Out in the living-room Hazel drew her chair to one side of the hearth.
Bill sprawled on the bearskin robe with another cigarette in his
fingers.
"No," he began, after a long silence, "this country doesn't get on
one's nerves--not if one is a normal human being. You'll find that.
When I first came up here I thought so, too; it seemed so big and empty
and forbidding.
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