He turned so quickly that he almost knocked me over. “Bother and confound them all!” he said. “Why don’t they keep to the time-table? There’s no system in this place. That is what ruins farming—want of system.”
He went on grumbling as he walked. I followed him. Halfway across the field we met the owner of the voice. She was a pleasant-looking lass, not exactly pretty—not the sort of girl one turns to look at in a crowd—yet, having seen her, it was agreeable to continue looking at her. St. Leonard introduced me to her as his eldest daughter, Janie, and explained to her that behind the study door, if only she would take the trouble to look, she would find a time-table—
“According to which,” replied Miss Janie, with a smile, “you ought at the present moment to be in the rick-yard, which is just where I want you.”
“What time is it?” he asked, feeling his waistcoat for a watch that appeared not to be there.
“Quarter to eleven,” I told him.
He took his head between his hands. “Good God!” he cried, “you don’t say that!”
The new binder, Miss Janie told us, had just arrived. She was anxious her father should see it was in working order before the men went back. “Otherwise,” so she argued, “old Wilkins will persist it was all right when he delivered it, and we shall have no remedy.”
We turned towards the house.
“Speaking of the practical,” I said, “there were three things I came to talk to you about. First and foremost, that cow.”
“Ah, yes, the cow,” said St. Leonard. He turned to his daughter. “It was Maud, was it not?”