8
About the middle of March, Tom was moved to a convalescent hospital at Polegate, and a fortnight later sent home. Worge gave him a big hail, and the whole family, including Thyrza, sat down to a supper which was supposed to outshine the best efforts of hospital. That supper was not only a welcome but a farewell. When he had eaten two more in the muddle of his kin, he would eat a third in quiet, alone with Thyrza. The few necessary preparations for his marriage had been made, and the room was booked in Hastings for the third day from now. His happiness made him dreamy, and also tender towards those he was to leave, for though he had not realised his mother’s jealousy of his sweetheart, he vaguely understood that it would hurt her to lose him, as lose him she must when he went to this other woman’s arms. So he held her hand under the table oftener and longer than he held Thyrza’s, and kissed her good night without being asked.
The next day Harry took him to see the spring sowings. They were finished now, and the chocolate acres lay moist and furrowed in a muffle of misty April sunshine. Harry, more thickset and sinewy than of old, tramped a little behind his brother, as a workman after an inspector, with sidelong glance at Tom’s brown, stubborn profile, anxious to see if praise or delight could be read there.
Tom was indeed delighted with the fruits of Harry’s industry, swelling in soft, scored curves from Worge’s southern boundaries at Forges Wood to the northern limits of the Street. But he was also aghast.
“You’ll never have the labour to kip and reap this—and you’ve bruk up grass!”
“I can manage valiant till harvest, and then I’ll git extra hands. As for the grass, ’twur only an old-fool’s idea that it mun never be ploughed.”
“And I reckon ’tis a young-fool’s idea to plough it,” said Tom rebukingly.
“The newspaaper said as grass-lands mun be bruk up now, to maake more acres.”
“And wot does the paaper know about it?”
“A lot, seemingly.”