TWO:He was free of them at last, galloping down the Landgate hill towards Rye Foreign."Aye," said Rugge, "that is as it should beI know where I could carry all the hats I could make, and sell them for a good price, if I were but free of the place."
TWO:He was dismayed by the lack of local enthusiasm. He dug up one or two of his own pastures and planted wheat; he even sacrificed ten acres of his precious hops,[Pg 410] but nobody seemed inclined to follow his example. The neighbourhood was ornately patriotic, flags flew from the oast-houses at Socknersh, union Jacks washed to delicate pastel shades by the chastening rainwhile the Standard misleadingly proclaimed that the Royal Family was in residence at Burntbarns. On Odiam the boys sang:He decided that the sheep should be Richard's special chargethey, at all events, could not make him sick; and if he was kept hard at work at something definite and important it would clear his mind of gentility nonsense. Reuben also had rather a pathetic hope that it might stir up his ambition.
TWO:Three months passed in this new way. Reuben would never have believed that Naomi could be a companion to him, especially after the last few hostile years. As for her, she looked young and pretty again; delicious slim lines had come into her figureno longer the slack curves and emaciation of recent months, or the matronly fullness of earlier times. Her health seemed completely restored.
TWO:"To father John Ball."How horrible everything had been! How horrible everything was still, with that loggish, inanimate thing lying there, all that was left of Beautiful Harry. Reuben wondered if he would die. If so, he had killed himhe had ignored his own inexperience and played splashy tricks with his new land. But nohe had not killed himit was Boarzell, claiming a victim in the signal-rite of its subjection. He remembered how that thirsty ground had drunk up Harry's blood. Perhaps it would drink up much more blood before he had done with itperhaps it would one day drink up his blood.... A vague, a sudden, a ridiculous fear clutched his thoughts; for the first time he felt afraid of the thing he had set out to conquerfor the first time Boarzell was not just unfruitful soil, harsh heather clumps and gorse-rootsit was something personal, opposing, vindictive, blood-drinking.
