“We’ll git it finished afore the rain.”
“Afore your grandmother dies,” jeered Mus’ Beatup. “I’m off to the Volunteer.”
“And leave us.... Faather!”
“I’m not a-going to stay here catching my death wud rheumatics, working in the rain under my son’s orders. Reckon you’d sooner see me dead than lose your hemmed oats—my hemmed oats I shud say—but I—” and Mus’ Beatup swung up his chin haughtily—“have different feelings.”
“Reckon you have, and you ought to be ashaumed of yourself!” cried Harry thickly, then flushed in self rebuke, for on the whole he was a respectful son.
Mus’ Beatup sauntered away, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched to his ears—his usual attitude when he felt guilty but wanted to look swaggering. Mr. Sumption and Mr. Poullett-Smith were both at the further end of the field, and no opposition stood between him and the Rifle Volunteer save the doubtful quality his wife might offer from the kitchen window. Harry watched him with burning cheeks and a full throat. “Reckon I’m lik to kip temperance all my days wud this,” he mumbled bitterly.
He then went down to the other workers, and told them that it was going to rain and that they were a labourer short, as his father was feeling ill and had gone indoors to rest, but that he hoped by “tar’ble hard wark” to get the field cut before the storm. “If the grain’s shocked, it’ll bear the rain, but if it’s left standing, the rain ull beat down the straw, and all the seed ull fly. Juglery, you taake the reaper—Norry Noakes, you git to Tassell’s head—Mus’ Sumption and Elphick and I ull reap, and Mus’ Smith and Nell and Zacky bind.... Now I reckon ’tis a fight ’twixt us and them gurt clouds over Galleybird.”
Elphick and Juglery were inclined to grumble at having their dinner-hour cut short, and talked of judgments equally bestowed on “them wot bruk the Sabbath” and “them wot bruk up grass.” But Mus’ Sumption’s professional opinion was that the approaching storm was not in the nature of a punitive expedition—“If the Lord had wanted to spoil this harvest, He would have done it on Thursday or Friday; now all He’ll get is the tail-end, and not that if I can help it.”
He bent his huge back to the sickle, and worked for the next hour without straightening. Mr. Poullett-Smith decided to forget the Sunday-school he was supposed to catechise at three, and Nell to forget the headache which would probably have sent her off the field at the same hour. Norry Noakes and Zacky, seeing their deliverance nigh, put more energy into that afternoon than they had put into all four other days of harvest—Norry nearly dragged Tassell’s head off his neck in his efforts to make him go faster.