I did not mind, truly I did not mind it.
The driver had protested, but only once, laconically:
"Whar's y'r coat an' hat?"
"I never wear any," I explained, beginning a propagandistic harangue on
the non-essentiality of clothes....
He cut in with the final pronouncement:
"Damn fool, you'll git pneumony."
Then he fell into obdurate, contemptuous silence.
* * * * *
The snow was deep about our living shanty and cook-shack in one, but
hard-frozen enough to bear a man's weight without snow-shoes. Over the
crust had fallen a powdery, white, new snow, about four inches deep.
Every morning, after the "boys" had eaten their breakfast and left for
the woods, I went through my exercises, stripped, out in the open ... a
half hour of it, finished by a roll in the snow, that set me tingling
all over.
One morning I made up my mind to startle the "boys" by running,
mother-naked, in a circle, whooping, about them, where they were sawing
up fallen trees and felling others.
It was a half mile to where they worked.
For more bizarre effect, I clapped on a straw hat which I found in the
rafters--a relic of the preceding summer....
* * * * *
"Gosh a'mighty, what's this a-comin!"...
Everybody stopped working. Two neighbour farmers, who had come over for
a bit of gossip, stooped, their hands on their knees, bowed with
astonishment, as if they had beheld an apparition.
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