Knowing the risks the farmer ran on newly-broken land, she had not adventured too much of her capital on the first year's harvest; but success might encourage Bob, while failure would certainly daunt him.
He would work for an object he was likely to gain, but if disappointed, regretted the exertions he had made, and refused, with humorous logic, to be stirred to fresh effort.
"I'm not convinced that farming's my particular duty," he once said.
"When I plow it's in the expectation of cashing the elevator warrants for the grain.

If I'm not to reap the crop, it seems to me that working fourteen hours a day is a waste of time that might be agreeably employed in shooting or riding about." Sadie urged that one got nothing worth having without a struggle.

Bob rejoined: "If you get the thing you aim at, the struggle's justified; if you don't you think of what you've missed while you were uselessly employed.

Of course, if you like a struggle, you have the satisfaction of following your bent; but hustling is a habit that has no charm for me." Sadie reflected that the last remark was true.

Bob never hustled; his talk and movements were marked by a languid grace that sometimes pleased and sometimes irritated her.