ONE:Reuben's eyes swept the dim outlines of his farmthe yard, the barns, the oasts, the fields beyond, up to where his boundaries scarred the waste. It was all blurred and blanketed in the darkness, but his mind could see it in every detail. He saw the cow-stable empty except for the six cheap Suffolks which just supplied his household and one or two gentry with milk; he saw doors split and unhinged that he could not afford to mend, gaping roofs that he could not afford to retile, while the martins stole his thatch for their autumn broods; he saw his oat-harvest mostly straw, his hop-harvest gathered at a loss, his hay spoiled with sorrel; he saw himself short of labour, one man turned off, another run away; and he saw all the flints and shards and lime of Boarzell breaking his plough, choking his winter wheat, while on the lower ground runnels of clay made his corn sedgy, and everywhere the tough, wiry fibres of the gorse drank all the little there was of goodness out of the ground and scattered it from its blossoms in useless fragrance.
TWO:The conversation became agricultural, but in spite of the interest such a topic always had for him, Reuben could not help watching the two girls. Miss Lardner, whom Alice called Rose, was a fine creature, so different from the other as to make the contrast almost laughable. She was tall and strappingin later life she might[Pg 245] become over stout, but at present her figure was splendid, superbly moulded and erect. She looked like a young goddess as she sat there, one leg crossed over the other, showing her white stocking almost to the knee. There was something arrogant in her attitude, as if she was aware of the splendour of her body, and gloried in it. Her face too was beautifulthough less classically sorather broad, with high flat cheek-bones, and a wide full-lipped mouth which would have given it almost a Creole look, if it had not been for her short delicate nose and her fair ruddiness. Her hair seemed to hesitate between gold and brownher eyes between boldness and languor."Nothing has been done to him but what he merited," answered Calverley, haughtily, surprised at her firmness, and by a singular feeling annoyed that solicitude for her husband should have called forth such an unusual demonstration.
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