It was a milk summer afternoon, the sky clear blue, the wind

still, and birds fluttering and singing. Everything looks serene

there, full of peace and love.
Nothing disturbing or restless there, in such harmony, even
the tiny insects could feel its special existence, the stirring grass
blades making sweet sighs of young love.
Happily a peasant and his family were working there beneath
the singing larks, putting fresh earth around potato stalks. May
God give music to excite their simple hearts.
They were all working, the mother and the second eldest
daughter weeding the ridges, the father spreading around the
stalks the precious clay that the eldest son dug from the rocky
field, and a younger son bringing sea sand from a far corner of
the field. The fourth child, almost an infant, staggered around
the mother, trying to help her.
They worked quietly, except once accidentally the father
dislodged a fresh stalk with a cry attracting them, and then the
mother said, “OH! Praised be God on high!”, crossing
herself.
They looked at the tiny new potatoes and wondered, and then
suddenly, the eldest son said, “Ah! If Mary were here now
wouldn’t she be glad to see the new potatoes. I remember,
exactly on this spot, she spread seaweed last winter”.
Silence followed those words. Mary, the eldest daughter, had
gone to America in early spring, only sending one letter back
since then. A neighbour’s daughter had written home
recently that Mary quitted her first job as a servant and was
unemployed.
The mother murmured sadly, and the father whispered
harshly, going on with the work. But the eldest son pondered
for a little while and said loudly to his mother, “Until she has
money to send, she will not say anything. You know, she is the
proudest one”.
The toddling child bringing weeds as gifts to his mother,
suddenly the mother hugged the child and kissed him. Then she
said, “Oh! Like angels they are singing up there. Wasn’t God
good to them to give them those voices? She may write if she
could hear the larks singing. But no larks would live in big
cities.”
Nobody replied, but the larks no longer sang happily, with the
sky becoming immense.Then they felt gloomy but the little
child still bringing little weeds as gifts to his mother.