"Do you suppose new dresses are a matter of vital importance to me?" she asked.
"Well," answered Hunter, "since you put the question, several things almost lead me to believe it."
He turned abruptly toward the steps.
"If you are coming with me, we may as well go along."
They crossed the wet paddock together, and now and then Florence glanced covertly at her husband's face. It was set and anxious, but there was no sign of surrender in it. She had, however, not expected to see the latter, for she knew that Elcot was one who could, when occasion demanded it, make a very stubborn fight.
At length they stopped and stood looking out across what at sunset had been a vast sea of tall, green wheat. Now it had gone down, parts of it as before the knife of a reaper, while the rest lay crushed and flung this way and that, as though an army had marched through it. Lush blades and half-formed ears were smashed into the mire and the odd clusters of battered stalks that stood leaning above the tangled chaos only served to heighten the suggestion of widespread ruin.
Florence watched her husband, but she did not care to speak, for there are times when expressions of sympathy are superfluous. When he walked slowly forward along the edge of the grain she followed him, without noticing that her thin shoes were saturated and her light skirt was trailing in the harsh wet grass. The ground rose slightly, and stopping when they reached the highest point he answered her inquiring glance.
"It looks pretty bad," he said. "Some of it—a very little—may fill out and ripen and we might get the binders through it, but the thing's going to be difficult."
"Will this hit you very hard, Elcot?"
Hunter turned and looked at her with gravely searching eyes, and she shrank from his gaze while a warmth crept into her face.