“Bother the bees!” exclaimed Mrs Greenways crossly. But on Molly the news had a different effect. It was counted lucky to be present at the housing of a new swarm. She at once left her occupation, seized a saucepan and an iron spoon, and regardless of her mistress rushed out into the garden, making a hideous clatter as she went. “There now, look at that!” said Mrs Greenways with a heated face. “She’s off for goodness knows how long, and a batch of loaves burning in the oven, and your uncle wanting his tea sent down into the field. Why ever should they want to go swarmin’ now in that contrairy way?”
She opened the oven door and took out the bread as she spoke.
“Now, don’t you go running off, Lilac,” she continued. “There’s enough of ’em out there to settle all the bees as ever was. You get your uncle’s tea and take it out, and Peter’s too. They won’t neither of ’em be in till supper. Hurry now.”
The last words were added simply from habit, for she had soon discovered that it was impossible to hurry Lilac. What she did was well and thoroughly done, but not even the example which surrounded her at Orchards Farm could make her in a bustle. The whole habit of her life was too strong within her to be altered. Mrs Greenways glanced at her a little impatiently as she steadily made the tea, poured it into a tin can, and cut thick hunches of bread and butter. “I could a done it myself in, half the time,” she thought; but she was obliged to confess that Lilac’s preparations if slow were always sure, and that she never forgot anything.
Lilac tilted her sunbonnet well forward and set out, walking slowly so as not to spill the tea. How blazing the sun was, though it was now nearly four o’clock. In the distance she could see the end of her journey, the big bare field beyond the orchard full of busy figures. As she passed the kitchen garden, Molly, rushing back from her encounter with the bees, almost ran against her.
“There was two on ’em,” she cried, her good-natured face shining with triumph and the heat of her exertions; “and we’ve housed ’em both beautiful. Lor’! ain’t it hot?”
She stood with her iron weapons hanging down on each side, quite ready for a chat to delay her return to the house. Molly was always cheerfully ready to undertake any work that was not strictly her own. Lilac felt sorry, as they went on their several ways, to think of the scolding that was waiting for her; but it was wasted pity, for Molly’s shoulders were broad, and a scolding more or less made no manner of difference to them.
There were all sorts and sizes of people at work in the hayfield as Lilac passed through it. Machines had not yet come into use at Danecross, so that the services of men, women, and children were much in request at this busy time. The farmer, remembering the motto, was determined to make his hay while the sun shone, and had collected hands from all parts of the neighbourhood. Lilac knew most of them, and passed along exchanging greetings, to where her uncle sat on his grey cob at the end of the field. He was talking to Peter, who stood by him with a wooden pitchfork in his hand.
Lilac thought that her uncle’s face looked unusually good-tempered as she handed up his meal to him. He sat there eating and drinking, and continued his conversation with his son.
“Well, and what d’ye think of Buckle’s offer for the colt?”