Ten Degrees Backward

by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

"I always think the different winds are different colours," she went on; "the North wind is white, the South wind yellow, the East wind blue and the West wind green. At least, that's how they always seem to me."

"And it's a very good description of them, too," I said, as I should have said just then of any description given by Fay.

"What's going on down there," she suddenly exclaimed, pointing to the field spread out at our feet where the hay-cutting machine was going round and round in an ever-diminishing circle. "There seems to be a sort of fuss on!"

My eyes were useless in a case like this, so I had to ask Fay for further information. "The machine has stopped," she said, "and there is a crowd of labourers round it, and all the haymakers from the next field have left off haymaking and are rushing to join the crowd."

"There must have been an accident," I said, rising from my seat under the hedge; "let us go down and see what is the matter. I always hate all reaping machines, they are so apt to cut off people's legs."

"I hate machines of any kind," agreed Fay, as we hastened down the hill together; "they are so ugly, and make such a noise. When I come out of the machinery-in-motion part of an exhibition, I always feel as if I'd been in hell."

I was thankful Annabel was not present to hear this description, but I smiled at it nevertheless. "And machine-made things are so horrid, too," I said; "they lose the individual touch, which makes for charm and originality."

Fay nodded. "I know. You can't really be fond of things which are made by the score exactly alike. I don't believe that even parents would be fond of their children if they were turned out in dozens like the plates of a dinner-service."

In a few minutes we reached the crowd in the hayfield, which respectfully parted to make way for us; and then with an exceeding bitter cry, which tore my heart-strings to breaking-point, Fay rushed forward and fell on her knees beside the recumbent form of Frank, who was lying white and unconscious on the ground.

Then there followed a dreadful time for Fay, and for me, too, as by that time whatever hurt her hurt me also. Frank, with his usual light-hearted carelessness, had stood too near to that horrible Juggernaut, the hay-cutting machine, with the terrible consequence that one of the scythes had nearly cut off his foot.