Then the men formed a group about the ale, the older women drank tea, the children making bands were given butter-milk, and the younger women with babes went cooing and clucking to the hedge where the little ones lay nuzzled up and unattended, some asleep in shawls, some awake on their backs and grabbing at the wondrous forests of marguerites towering up beside them, and all crying with one voice at sight of the breast, which the mothers were as glad to give as they to take.
The rooks cawed in the glen, there was a hot hum of bees, and a company of starlings passed overhead, glittering in the sunlight like the scales of a herring.
“They're taiching us a lesson,” said Cæsar. “They're going together over the sea; but there's someones on earth would sooner go to heaven itself solitary, and take joy if they found themselves all alone and the cock of the walk there.”
Kate and Philip stood and talked where they had been shearing quietly, simply, without apparent interest, and meanwhile the workers discussed them.
First the men: “He works his siggle like a man though.”—“A stout boy anyway; give him practice and he'd shear many a man in bed.” Then the women: “She's looking as bright as a pewter pot, and she's all so pretty as the Govenar's daughter too.”—“Got a good heart, though. Only last week she had word of Pete, and look at the scarlet perricut.” Finally both men and women: “Lave her alone, mother; it's that Ross that's wasting the woman.”—“Well, if I was a man I'd know my tack.”—“Wouldn't trust. It comes with Cæsar anyway; the Lord prospers him; she'll have her pickings. Nothing bates religion in this world. It's like going to the shop with an ould Manx shilling—you get your pen'orth of taffy and twelve pence out.”—“Lend's a hand with the jough then, boy. None left? Aw, Cæsar's wonderful religious, but there's never much lavings of ale with him.”
Cæsar was striding through the stooks past Philip and Kate.
“Will it thrash well, Mr. Cregeen?” said Philip.
“Eight bolls to the acre maybe, but no straw to spake of, sir,” said Cæsar. “Now, boys, let the weft rest on the last end, finish your work.”
The workers fell to again, and the sickle of the leader sang round his head as he hacked and blew and sent off his breath in spits until the green grass springing up behind him left only a triangular corner of yellow corn. Fore-rig and the after-rig took a tussle together, and presently nothing was standing of all the harvest of Glenmooar but one small shaft of ears a yard wide or less. Then the leaders stopped, and all the shearers of the field came up and cast down their sickles into the soil in a close circle, making a sheaf of crescent moons.
“Now for the Melliah,” said Cæsar. “Who's to be Queen?”