Thus Richard lived through the feasts and fasts of the Shepherd's Year. In spring there were hazy, drowsy days when he sat with his book under the hedge—some hole close by where he could stuff it if Reuben came that way—now and then lifting an eye to the timid, foolish faces buried in the sun-stained meadow-grass. Then later came the dipping, the collie Havelock barking and blustering at one end of the bath, while old Comfort poked the animals through it with his crook, and Richard received them terrified and evil-smelling at the other side. He grew furious because his hands were all sore and blistered with the dip. Reuben laughed at him grossly—"Yur granny shall mäake you a complexion wash, surelye!"
Then came the shearing, that queen of feasts. The local band of shearers called at Odiam for the first time, and were given an inaugural welcome. Richard sulked at the honour paid him as shepherd—he felt it was indeed a case of King among Sweepers. However, in point of fact, he enjoyed the actual shearing well enough. It was a warm July day, the air full of the scent of hayseed; the sheep came hustling and panting into the shearing-pens, and the shearers stripped them with songs and jokes and shouts of "Shear close, boys!" There was also ale in buckets, brought out by a girl hired for the occasion, who was stout and pretty and smiled at Richard. And it was good to watch the yellowish piles of fleece grow at one's knees, and comical to see the poor shorn sheep stagger up from the ground, all naked and confused, hardly knowing themselves, it seemed.
When the shearing was done there was supper in the kitchen at Odiam, with huge drinks of "black ram," and sheep-shearing songs such as "Come, all my jolly boys," and "Here the rose-buds in June." Also the Sussex Whistling Song:
"There was an old Farmer in Sussex did dwell,
And he had a bad wife, as many knew well."
But Richard did not enjoy the supper as much as the shearing, for most of the men over-ate themselves, and all of them over-drank. Also the pretty serving-girl forsook him for Albert, who on one occasion was actually seen to put his arm round her waist, and hold it there till a scowl from his father made him drop it.
Then in winter came the lambing, which is the shepherd's Lent. Richard and the old man from Doozes kept long vigils in the lambing hut, and those nights and days were to young Backfield dreams of red, fuggy solitude, the stillness broken only by the slip of coals in the brazier, or the faint bleating of the ewes outside—while sometimes mad Harry's fiddle wept down the silences of Boarzell.
Richard began to take a new interest in his flock—hitherto they had merely struck him as grotesque. Their pale silly eyes, their rough, tic-ridden fleeces, their scared repulsiveness after the dipping, their bewildered nakedness after the shearing, had filled him either with amusement or disgust; but now, when he saw them weakly lick the backs of their new-born lambs, while the lambs' little tails quivered, and tiny, entreating sounds came from their mouths, he found in them a new beauty, which he had found nowhere else in his short, hard life—the beauty of an utterly loving, tender, and helpless thing.
He had his Lilly with him in the hut, for there were long hours of idleness as well as of anxiety, but he was careful to hide away the book if Reuben came to inspect; for he knew that his father would have sat through the empty hours in concentration and expectancy, his ears straining for the faintest sound. He would have thought of nothing but the ewes, and he looked to everyone to think of nothing else. But Richard studied Latin, and the old Doozes man put in plenty of light, easily startled sleep.