r toil over the sheaves, and then took them from
her and pitched them on the stack haphazard.

"You shall not bother over it any more," he said, "not if we live on
hominy all winter. Have you ever been in Mexico? Well, Hawaii was
called the land of poco tempo, but Mexico was the land of manana.
There isn't any work there for the work's sake. I mean there wasn't,
and we can take a lesson from them. We need not hurry; the legislature
will not meet this winter, and there will be no grand opera before
spring. Daisy and Lily shall do our work for us. We will find a bit of
hard, smooth ground, and then we will not muzzle the cows that tread
out the grain."

"Willingly," gasped Robin, climbing down from her slippery eminence on
top of the load of grain; "but do you think we are going to have any
winter?"

"That is pre-eminently one of the things that no fellow can find out,"
he answered. "In a dream you are likely to have any kind of weather,
and on a submerged planet we have no precedents at hand to tell us
what to expect. By replanting the vegetables right along we have had a
perpetual crop. As long as we have this kind of weather things will
grow, and I suppose we would better let them. Shut in as we are, it
doesn't seem likely that any very fearful winds are apt to trouble us;
and if there is a wet season, on this slope we shall have good
drainage. If the worst comes to the worst, there's the tunnel. Could
you make that cheerful and homelike?"

Robin smiled rather sadly. "It will do to put the grain in," she said,
and they walked on silently.

The spot finally selected for the threshing floor was brushed as clean
as twig brooms would make it, and the wheat spread out upon it. Adam
and Lassie drove the cows over it leisurely, and between times Adam
experimented on a flail. When he finally had one that answered the
purpose, and found he could use it without fracturing his skull, the
cows were released, and he went on with the work. Seated on a boulder
close by, her sombrero tipped well over her eyes, Robin fanned the
grain, and converted it into a coarse cracked wheat with a venerable
coffee-mill.

"I will make you a Mexican mill, when I get through with this," said
Adam, "but you cannot use it, because it is too hard work; I shall
have to be the miller. It is a rather simple affair, and dates from
before the days of Noah; it is made with two stones, sandstone
preferred, the lower of which is hollowed out bowl-fashio