"Of course I can. I want to work. Do you know that's one of the things I want to come here for. When I come and stay--that's what I've come to arrange with Mrs. Peverell--when I come and stay, I want to work. I can do what I'm told."
"There's few as can," said he. "Them things we're told to do, get mighty slow in doin'. Could 'ee drive a horse rake?"
"I can drive a horse."
He whipped up the old mare and said no more until she asked him why they had not cut the grass that day. It was so fine, she said, and fine weather she thought was what they wanted first of all.
"There be plenty of fine days when the grass is green," said he. "'Twill be fine now a few days, time we'd be gettin' it in. We'd a shower yesterday--a nice drop of rain it was. Sun to-day and they trefolium'll have their seed just right and nigh to droppin'. 'Ee want the seed ripe in the stack. 'Tain't no good leavin' it in the bottom of the wagon."
She let him talk on. She did not know what trefolium was. He needed a listener, no more. Questions would not have pleased his ear. All the way back he talked about the land and as to one who understood every word he said. There was his heart and there he spoke it as a lover might who needed no more than a listener to hear the charms of his mistress. The mere sound of his voice, the ring it had of vital energy, these were enough to make that talking a thrilling song to her. It echoed to something in her. She did not know what it was. Scarce a word of it did she understand; yet not a word of it would she have lost.
This something that there was in him, was something also in her. Indistinctly she knew it was that which she must feed and stimulate to make her child. As little would he have understood that as she had comprehension of his talk of crops and soil. Their language might not be the same, but the same urging force was there to give them speech and thought. Just as he spoke of the land though never of himself or his part with it, so she thought of her child, a thing that needed soil to grow in. No haphazard chance of circumstance did she feel it to be. Tilling must she do and cleansing of the earth, before her harvest could be reaped. Her night would come, that night before, that night when all was ready, that night after rain and sun when the seed was ripe and must be gathered in the stack and none be wasted on the wagon floor.
"'Ee understand what I'm sayin'," she suddenly heard him interpose between the level of her thoughts.
"Yes, yes--I understand," said she. "And you don't know how interesting it is."
He turned the mare into the farm gate and tossed the reins on to her back.