All round the place the air was sweet with the smell of the mown hay, and from the Broad Pasture there came the rattle and throb of the mowing-machines.
Eliot went down the road and through the gate into the hay-field. Colin and Anne were there. Anne at the top of the field drove the mower, mounted up on the shell-shaped iron seat, white against the blue sky. Colin at the bottom, slender and tall above the big revolving wheel, drove the rake. The tedding machine, driven by a farm hand, went between. Its iron-toothed rack caught the new-mown hay, tossed it and scattered it on the field. Beside the long glistening swaths the cut edge of the hay stood up clean and solid as a wall. Above it the raised plane of the grass-tops, brushed by the wind, quivered and swayed, whitish green, greenish white, in a long shimmering undulation.
Eliot went on to meet Anne and Colin as they turned and came up the field again.
When they saw him they jumped down and came running.
"Eliot, you never told us."
"I wired at nine this morning."
"There's nobody in the house and we've not been in since breakfast at seven," Colin said.
"It's twelve now. Time you knocked off for lunch, isn't it?"
"Are you all right, Eliot?" said Anne.
"Rather."