“It’s a good thing that I had connections abroad,” he went on. “There’s one man coming from an English firm, and another from America. It ought to be a big business.”
The morrow came. Merle stood looking after her husband as he drove off, his hat on the back of his head, through the haze that followed the night’s rain. But there was no time to stand trembling; they were to have the strangers to dinner, and she must see to it.
Out in the field the machine stood ready, a slender, newly painted thing. A boy was harnessing the horses.
Two men in soft hats and light overcoats came up; it was old Uthoug, and the Bank Manager. They stopped and looked round, leaning on their sticks; the results of the day were not a matter of entire indifference to these two gentlemen. Ah! here was the big carriage from Loreng, with the two strangers and Peer himself, who had been down to fetch them from the hotel.
He was a little pale as he took the reins and climbed to his seat on the machine, to drive it himself through the meadow of high, thick timothy-grass.
The horses pricked up their ears and tried to break into a gallop, the noise of the machine behind them startling them as usual at first, but they soon settled down to a steady pace, and the steel arm bearing the shears swept a broad swath through the meadow, where the grass stood shining after the rain.
The two strangers walked slowly in the rear, bending down now and again to look at the stubble, and see if the shears cut clean. The tall man with the heavy beard and pince-nez was the agent for John Fowler of Leeds; the little clean-shaven one with the Jewish nose represented Harrow & Co. of Philadelphia.
Now and again they called to Peer to stop, while they investigated some part of the machine.
They asked him then to try it on different ground; on an uneven slope, over little tussocks; and at last the agent for Fowler’s would have it that it should be tried on a patch of stony ground. But that would spoil the shears? Very likely, but Fowler’s would like to know exactly how the shears were affected by stones on the ground.
At last the trials were over, and the visitors nodded thoughtfully to each other. Evidently they had come on something new here. There were possibilities in the thing that might drive most other types out of the field, even in the intense competition that rages all round the world in agricultural machinery.