A wheat-ear's nest that I found in a furrow and carried home with its five little dainty blue eggs gave rise to a discussion about the rarity of these pretty little structures compared with the numbers of the tiny builders who are so plentiful in harvesting that the shepherds make quite a perquisite from the sale of them; an old hare that the bailiff started from its form on the unbeaten track made him wonder at the unusual size of these marsh inhabitants, and as we came along the dike where the purple reeds were already growing tall, I remember his noticing how changing was their color on the surface as they swayed in great waves beneath the breeze, how blue one way, how silver-gray the other; I recollect every word that we spoke.
It was commonplace talk enough, but it was the talk that had first begun to bind us together, and now there was beginning to be something in it that made every word very much the reverse of commonplace to me. What was it?
I did not ask myself, but I knew very well that since that night when Trayton Harrod had promised to try and remain on Knellestone, because I had asked him to do so, that something had grown very fast, so fast that I was conscious of a happy state of guilt, and wondered whether old Deborah knew anything about it as she watched me bid the bailiff good-bye at the gate while she was picking marjoram on the cliff-garden above our heads.
I know that at first I was angry because of her keen little dark eyes and her short little laugh, and I loftily refused to discuss either with her or with Reuben the advantages of Mr. Harrod's remaining on the farm, or the indignity of having machinery at Knellestone and Southdowns on the marsh. There was no delay about either of these matters. Mr. Harrod was a prompt man. I recollect the very day he bought the sheep—yes, I recollect it very well. It was a very hot day, one of the first days of July. He had had the mare—my restive mare—put into the gig, and had started off very early in the morning to Ashford market. It was a long way to Ashford market, but you could just do it and get back in the day if you started very early, and if you had a horse like my mare to go. There was a haze over the sea and even over the marsh; down in the hayfield, where I had been all the morning, the heat was almost unbearable. When five o'clock came I went in to mother in the parlor.
"It's such a nice evening for a ride, mother," said I. "I think I'll just take that pot of jelly over to Broadlands to old Mrs. Winter. She'd be pleased to see me."
Mother looked up, surprised. "I thought you didn't care for riding that old horse," said she.
"Well, I can't have the mare, so it's no use thinking of it," I answered.
"You can't have her to-day, because the bailiff has got her, but you can have her to-morrow," said mother. "And it's full late to start off so far."
I walked to the window and looked out. "I think I'll go to-day," said I. "It may blow up for rain to-morrow. As likely as not we shall have a storm. It's light now till after nine."
"Very well," said mother; "you can please yourself. You'd better take some of that stuff for the old body's rheumatism as well."