Time came when he himself could climb a tree and peer within a nest. Down on the ground below, Mary would stand with heart dry on her lips, yet bidding him no more than care of the places where he put his feet. Never should he know fear, she determined, never through her.
So she brought him up and to the life of the farm as well. With Mr. Peverell he spent many of his days. In the hayfields and at harvest time, the measure of his joys was full. He knew the scent of good hay from bad before ever he could handle a rake to gather it. He saw the crops thrashed. He saw them sown. In all the procession of those years, the coming and going, the sowing and harvest, the receiving and the giving of life became the statutory values of his world.
And there beside him, ever at his listening ear, was Mary to give him the simple purpose of his young ideals.
He never knew he learnt. He never realized the soil he grew in. Up to the light he came, the light she gave him from the emotion of her own ideals; up to the light like a sapling tree, well planted in the wood, with space and air to stretch its branches to the sun.
"Mummy, what's death?" he asked her one day as he sat with her while she milked the cows. "What's death?"
For a long time she continued with her milking in silence. She had taught him never to bother for an answer to his questions and only to ask again when he made sure his question had not been heard. Now he leant up against the stall waiting in patience, watching her face. Peeping at her then when making sure she had not heard, he asked once more.
"Mummy, what's death? Is that too soon?"
She smiled and pressed his hand with her own that was warm and wet with milk.
"Why do you ask that, John?" she inquired.
"There were two moles got chopped with the hay knives. I saw them. They were lying in a lump and all bloody and still. Is that death? Mr. Peverell said they was quite dead. Is death being quite dead?"