Part Two - Heard From the Study

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Come, this wasn't work. He might as well have stayed out with the family
and helped with the dishes. This was being like Eugenia Mills, who
always somehow had something to do upstairs when there was any work to
do downstairs. Eugenia was a woman who somehow managed to stand from
under life, anyhow, had been the most successful draft-dodger he knew.
No call had been urgent enough to get her to the recruiting station to
shoulder her share of what everybody had to do. But what did she get out
of her successful shirking? She was in plain process of drying up and
blowing away.

He turned to his desk and drew out the papers which had the figures and
estimates on that popple. He would see if the Warner woodlot had as much
popple and basswood on it as they thought. It would, of course, be
easiest to get it off that lot, if there were enough of it to fill the
order for casters. The Hemmingway lot and the Dornwood lot oughtn't to
be lumbered except in winter, with snow for the sleds. But you could
haul straight downhill from the Warner lot, even on wheels, using the
back lane in the Eagle Rocks woods. There was a period of close
attention to his papers, when he heard nothing at all of what went on in
the rooms next his study. His mind was working with the rapid, trained
exactitude which was a delight to him, with a sure, firm grasp on the
whole problem in all its complicated parts.