“Only a lazy hound I can’t lick into shape, mother. Teach him to help you about the farm, and send him back as soon as you’ve trained him. He can be spared from Marshlands, now there’s less to be done about the fields.”
“Nay, now, Reuben—I’m not one to go borrowing—I war niver that sort—an’ I’m used to work.”
“The lad has his orders—from me,” said Reuben. “See that he does his full share of the work, mother, and a little over.”
Mrs. Mathewson, to her surprise, found herself yielding to this new air of Gaunt’s, half persuasive and half masterful. Indeed, she was beginning more and more to lean on him, and would tell herself, as she smoked by the hearth at nights, that she had earned a little luxury, maybe, in her old age. This morning she was slow to yield. The work was too much for one pair of hands, and she was “bone-weary;” but better work till she dropped than let it be said that they had needed outside help at Ghyll.
At last she consented grudgingly. “’Tis only a loan o’ th’ lad, mind ye,” she hastened to assure him. “I suppose I mun hire one soon, like it or no; ’specially now they begin to ask for milk again down i’ Garth. They ask i’ a whisper, though,” she added, with her old, tart humour. “A shout would bring fever out of its kennel, so they fancy still.”
So the farm-lad was left at Ghyll; and the look on his face was laughable to watch when Reuben left him to the mercies of Widow Mathewson. The master might be harder these days than of old; but the widow’s hardness, and the strength of her fist to back it if need be, were renowned throughout the dale.
September passed, and still the clear, gold magic made Paradise of fields and copse. It was now that magic walked across the fells. The dales-folk had seen the mystery in other years, but never as they saw it now; for no man could remember such a spell of drought; and such a fall rain to follow it.
The pastures, sloping to the blue and amber sky, had been smoking hot before the rain came; the first day’s moisture had been lost, for it was turned to the steam which men had named a ground-mist. The second day’s fall had been lapped up, greedily as a cat laps milk, and the third day’s, too, had gone to feed the soil. It was only on the fourth day that the streams had begun to brawl and chatter, as if they had claimed all the mercy of the skies. Like most folk who make noise, the brooks were spreading an empty boast abroad; they were idlers for the most part, dawdling down a field-way here, a glen there, until some miller stayed their course and bade them turn his mill-wheel for him; but it was the thrifty, working pastures that caught the first fruits, and turned them to good uses.
Gaunt, as he rode about his lands, could see the miracle take shape before his eyes. Sharp Fell, away to the southwest, had been as grey-brown as a hazelnut, withered before it comes to ripeness; now it showed a tinge of green, and each day the green lay deeper, richer across the burnt-up pastures. He had watched this uprising of the grass in far-off countries when the wet season followed extreme heat; but never before in Garth.
Yeoman Hirst overtook him one of these days, when both were riding to Shepston market. “Seems there’s going to be a hay-crop, after all, though a lile bit late in the year,” he laughed, pointing to the pastures with his switch. “They say Garth weather’s queer, but I niver yet made hay at Kirstmas-time.”