Mona’s heart leaps, and a new thought comes to her. If Oskar does not wish to go back to Germany, why shouldn’t he stay here and farm Knockaloe?
Next morning, after the third gang has gone, she is on her way to her landlord’s. Her last half-year’s rent is due, and then there’s the question of the lease, which runs out in November.
It is a beautiful morning with blue sky and bright sunshine. The snowdrops are beginning to peep and the yellow eyes of the gorse are showing. As she goes down the road with a high step she is thinking of her landlord’s answer to her father when, four years ago, he asked what was to happen to the farm after the war was over: “Don’t trouble about that. You are here for life, Robert—you and your children.”
She meets her landlord at the gate of his house. He is in his church-going clothes, having just returned from Peel, where he has been sitting on the bench as a magistrate.
“The rent, I suppose?” he says, and he leads her into the sitting-room.
She counts it out to him in Treasury notes, and he gives her a receipt for it. Then he rises and makes for the door, as if wishing to be rid of her. She keeps her seat and says:
“What about the lease, sir?”
“We’ll not talk about that to-day,” says the landlord.