Landtakers: The Story of an Epoch

Somehow or other the calendar went astray and there was an argument about the date. Cabell said it could not be later than August the eighth and Gursey said it would not be earlier than August the fifteenth. Not a very urgent matter at ordinary times, but the question now was when the lambs would begin to drop. Cabell had marked September the thirtieth on the calendar when he put the rams in on the first of May, but Bill Penberthy now lumbered into the dispute, on principle, to assert that the rams went in on April twenty-four.

Cabell was probably the only one who knew for certain when the rams went in, when the lambs were due, and what the date was, but their doubts possessed him at once, and before a week was past he had lost all faith in his own sense of time. In vain, Sambo tried to comfort him by saying that the ewes would begin dropping, calendar or no calendar, when they had to. Cabell nodded gloomily, as though he mistrusted even ewes to do their work without a watchful eye on them.