"'Tis Love breeds love in me, and cold disdain
Kills that again."—DONNE.
With the morning we had pulled ourselves together again. Not a word did Elizabeth address to me on the subject of our having met my old love in attendance on Muriel. Not a syllable did I say to her about the object of her own misplaced affections, that finished and unscrupulous flirt, that philanderer more accomplished than Harry—Colonel Fielding. The name of Captain Holiday was not mentioned. In fact, there might not have been "such a thing as young men" in our world that morning.
A wet morning it had turned out! Hay-culling would be out of the question. This we knew even before we scrambled into our brown Land Army mackintoshes and splashed away down the road.
Elizabeth congratulated herself on the nice dry indoor job that would be hers, for Mrs. Price was going to let us take turns at helping her on baking-day, and this was the turn of my chum.
As for me, I found that I should also be kept out of the wet. My morning's work was in the big shearing-shed, turning the shearing-machine for Ivor, the shepherd. He held down the fat lambs on a wooden bench set on the great black floor-sheet of tarpaulin, and went slowly and methodically to work with a sort of twelve-pointed clipping-knife over the body of the lamb, while I turned the big red wheel with its belt and pipe attached to the knife. It was not hard work, but quite soothing—rather like knitting!
And I was at this occupation when I had a visitor, brought in by Mr. Price. It was none other than young Colonel Fielding, who asked diffidently whether he might take a turn and give a hand either to Ivor or Miss Matthews.
Ivor, a blond, quiet man in a dark-blue linen coat, looked up and smiled benignantly upon this slim young officer. Ivor had no English, Mr. Price explained, but he understood pretty well everything else. Especially everything about sheep.
"Then—er—you're lucky to have had him turned down by the doctor, and to be able to keep him on the farm," said Colonel Fielding.
"Oh, he would make a very poor soldier," was the Welsh farmer's verdict. "Very reserved man; very reserved indeed!"
Ivor smiled again as the lamb upon which he had been operating dropped the last of his heavy coat upon the sheet and, shaven, shorn, and freed at last, scrambled out into the adjoining shed.