One thing he noticed, and that was that the housework was always done for him by his mother as if there were no sickness to fill her time. Always when he came home of an evening, his supper was waiting for him, hot and savoury. He breakfasted whenever he had a mind, and there were slices of cold pie or dabs of bread and meat for him to take out and eat as he workedhe had no time to come home to dinner now. Really his mother was tumbling to things wonderfully wellshe looked a little tired sometimes, it is true, and the lines of her face were growing thinner, but she was saving him seven shillings a month and the girl's food; and all that money and food was feeding the hungry earth.
He dashed his hand over his eyes, and then swung round, turning back towards the groups, lest he should become weak in solitude. Somehow the character of the crowd had changed while he had been away. Angry murmurs surged through it like waves, curses beat against one another, a rumour blew like foam from mouth to mouth.He suddenly leaned over the gate and kissed Caro on the lips.Bessie was now thirty, and looked older, for she had lost a front tooth and her pretty hair had faded: but she was as confident of Robert's love as ever. He had[Pg 334] written to her by every mail, she told Caro, and they had both saved and scraped and waited and counted the days till they could consummate the love born in those fields eternally fixed in twilight by their memory. There had been no intercourse between Odiam and Eggs Hole, so, as Robert had never written to his family, Caro heard for the first time of the sheep-farm in Queensland and its success. He had done badly at first, Bessie said, what with the drought and many other things against him, but now he was well established, and she would be far better off and more comfortable as the felon's wife than she had ever been as the daughter of honest parents.
ONE:"Why? Since your husband can't go, wot's more likely than he shud send his man to t?ake you?"
ONE:But, after all, this subtle gorse-fragrance had its suitableness, for though gorse may cast out the scent of soft fruit from its flowers, its stalks are wire and its roots iron, its leaves are so many barbs for those who would lay hands on its sweetness. It was like Boarzell itself, which was Reuben's delight and his dread, his beloved and his enemy.
TWO:Reuben treated these irreverences with scorn. Nothing would make him abate a jot of his dignity. On the contrary, his manner and his presence became more and more commanding. He drove a splendid blood mare in his gig, smoked cigars instead of pipes, and wore stand-up collars about four inches highwhen he was not working, for it had not struck him that it was undignified to work, and he still worked harder on his farm than the worst-paid pig-boy.Chapter 6
TWO:"Quite so, Squire. But it ?un't the cow as I'm vrothered about so much as these things always happening. This ?un't the first 'rag,' as he calls it, wot he's had on my farm. I've complained to you before.""Ah," said the youth in the open-work socks approvingly. "That's very like an episode in 'Meryon's House,' you knowthat glorious scene in which Jennifer the Prostitute goes down to the New Forest with Meryon and suddenly begins dancing in a glade."
THREE:"By my faith, cousin," said he, addressing Thomas of Woodstock, "yonder are the varlets! Do you see how bravely their pennons are waving, and how, here and there, among their black heads, something bright glitters in the sun?"
