IN WHICH TOMMY CROSSES THE PLOUGHING
The early days of January were shadowed by Lady Chantrey's illness.
I fancy that over all hung the presentiment that it would bear her away from our midst, and there was no home in Camslove or Becklington, nor a heart in any of the far-scattered farms around them, but would be the sadder for the loss.
And on a January afternoon she kissed Madge for the last time.
To Madge it seemed that heaven and earth alike had become black and desolate, for ever, as she sobbed upon the bed-clothes, and besought her mother to come back.
The household was too overwhelmed, and itself too sorrow-stricken to take much notice at first of the child, and for an hour or more she lay with her arms about her mother's neck.
Then, at last, she slipped from the bed and stole out into the dusk. A thin rain was falling over the country-side, but she hardly noticed it as she crossed the barren fields and stumbled through the naked hedges.
At the ploughing she stopped.
Something in the long, relentless furrows seemed to speak to her of the finality of it all, and it was only when she flung herself down upon the upturned earth that, as to all in sorrow, the great mother put forth her words of cheer to her, as who should say: