"Yes," answered father; "but we must be glad we have had the rain before we had to get the hay in."
"That we must," replied Harrod. "The hay looks beautiful."
We were passing along through the meadows ready for the scythes; they stretched on every side of us. Meadows for hay, pastures for sheep, there was scarcely anything else, save here and there a blue turnip-field or a tract of sparsely sown brown land, where the wheat made as yet no show. The one little homestead to which we were bound made a very poor effect in the vast plain; there was nothing but land and sea and sky. A great deal of land, flat monotonous land, more monotonous now in its richness and the brilliant greenness of its early summer-time than it would be later when the corn was ripe and the flowering grasses turning to brown: an uneventful land, relying for its impressiveness on its broad simplicity, that seemed to have no reason for ending or change; above the great stretch of earth a great vault of blue sky flecked with white vapors and lined with long opal clouds out towards the horizon; between the land and the sky a strip of blue sea binding both together; sea, blue as a sapphire against the green of the spring pastures. Far down here upon the level we could not see the belt of yellow shingle that from the cliff above one could tell divided marsh and ocean: right across the wide space it was one stretch of lightly varied tints away to the shipping and the scattered buildings at the mouth of the river.
We walked on, three abreast. Our talk was of nothing in particular; only of the budding summer flowers—yellow iris, and meadowsweet along the dikes, crowfoot making golden patches on the meadows, scarlet poppies beginning to appear among the growing wheat—but I don't know how it was that, in spite of father's presence, there was a kind of feeling in my heart as though Trayton Harrod and I were quite on a different plane to what we had been two days ago; I don't know why it was, but I was very happy.
The sheep were gathered in the fold when we reached the farm, and Tom Beale, the shepherd, was clipping them with swift and adroit hands. Reuben and his old dog Luck were there also; they were both of them very fond of having a finger in the pie of their former calling, but I think there was no love lost between them all. Luck could be good friends enough with Taff, but he never could abide that smart young collie who followed Tom Beale's lead; and as for Reuben, he was busy already passing comments in a low voice to father on the way in which Beale was doing his work.
Father humored the old man to the top of his bent—he was very fond of Reuben—but Beale went his way all the same, and sent one poor patient ewe after another out of its heavy fleece, to leap, amazed and frightened, among the flock, unable to trace its companions in their altered condition. One could scarcely help laughing, they looked so naked and bewildered reft of their warm covering, and just about two-thirds their usual size.
"Ay, the lambs won't have much more good o' their dams now," chuckled Reuben. "They're forced to wean themselves, most on them, after this, for there are few enough that knows one another again."
"They do look different, to be sure," laughed I.
"You might get your 'tiver' now, Reuben Ruck," said Beale, "if you have a mind to give a hand with this job. They're most on 'em tarred."