Captures — Reading Companion

th her free hand. It gave him a kind of farmyard amusement to see those eyes of hers following his son about. ‘She’s Ned’s if he wants her--young hussy!’ he thought. ‘Begad, but it would put Steer’s nose out of joint properly if that girl got in front of his precious niece.’ To say that this thought was father to a wish would too definitely express the circumambulatory mind of Bowden--a lazy and unprecise thinker; but it lurked and hovered when he took his ash-plant and browsed his way out of the yard to have a look at the young bull before supper. At the meadow of water-weed and pasture, where the young red bull was grazing, he stood leaning over the gate, with the swallows flying high. The young bull was ‘lukin’ up bravely’--in another year he would lay over that bull of Steer’s. Ah! he would that! And a dim savagery stirred in Bowden; then passed in the sensuous enjoyment--which a farmer never admits--at the scent, sight, sounds, of his fields in fine weather, at the blue above and the green beneath him, the gleam of that thread of water, half smothered in bulrushes, ‘daggers,’ and monkey flower, under the slowly sinking sun, at the song of a lark, and the murmuring in the ash-trees, at the glistening ruddy coat of the young bull and the sound of his cropping! Three rabbits ran into the hedge. So that fellow had shot his dog--his dog that had nipped up more rabbits out of corn than any dog he ever owned! He tapped his stick on the gate. The young bull raised a lazy head, gazed at his master, and, flicking his tail at the flies, resumed his pasturing.

‘Shot my dog!’ thought Bowden; ‘shot my dog! Yu wait a bit!’

The girl Pansy turned the handle of the separator, and its whining drone mixed with the thoughts and feelings, poignant yet formless, of one who had little say in her own career. There was an ache in her loins, for hay harvest was ever a hard week; and an ache in her heart, because she had no leisure, like Molly Winch and other girls, who could find time for the piano and to make their dresses. She touched her hard frieze skirt. She was sick of the ugly thing. And she hastened the separator. She had to feed the calves and set the supper before she could change into her Sunday frock and go to evening church--her one weekly festivity. Ned Bowden! Her fancy soared to the monstrous extravagance of herself and Ned walking across the fields to church together, singing out of one hymn-book; Ned who had given her a look when he passed just now as if he realised at last that she had been thinking of him for weeks. A dusky flush crept up in her pale cheeks. A girl must think of somebody--she wasn’t old Mother Bowden, with her hands on her lap all day, in sunlight or fire-shine, content just to be warm! And she turned the handle with a sort of frenzy. Would the milk never finish running through? Ned never saw her in her frock--her frock sprigged with cornflowers; he went off too early to his courting, Sunday evenings. In this old skirt she looked so thick and muddy. And her arms---- Gazing despairingly at arms browned and roughened her fancy took another monstrous flight. She saw herself and Molly Winch side by side ungarbed. Ah! She would make two of that Molly Winch! The thought at once pained and pleased her. It was genteel to be thin and elegant; and yet--instinct told her--strength and firmness of flesh had been desirable before ever gentility existed. She let the handle go, and, lifting the pail of ‘waste,’ hurried down with it to the dark byre, whence the young calves were thrusting their red muzzles. She pushed them back in turn--greedy little things--smacking their wet noses, scolding them. Ugh! How mucky it was in there--they ought to give that byre a good clean up! Banging down the empty pail, she ran to set out supper on the long deal table. In the last of the sunlight old Mother Bowden’s bright eyes seemed to watch her inhumanly. She would never be done in time--never be done in time!

The beef, the cider, the cheese, the bread, the pickles--what else? Lettuce! Yes, and it wasn’t washed, and Bowden loved his lettuce. But she couldn’t wait--she couldn’t! Perhaps he’d forget it--if she put some cream out! From the cool, dark dairy, down the little stone passage, she fetched the remains of the scalded cream.