The hostile party reached the cottage, and the latch was quickly raised; but, finding it resist their attempts, the voice of Calverley, in an authoritative tone, pronouncedHave pity, my true love, have pity on me!"
ONE:"Oh yes, but you did;don't you remember one Robin Wells, a stout rosy boy with curly hair, that made you a wreath of holly and ivyone All-hallows dayand put it on your head, and called you a little queen? You were ten years old that day, and it is just ten years and three days since then. Don't you remember it?"
TWO:"Wot've you bin crying for?" he asked as he slid a chair close to hers. He wondered if the humiliation of Odiam had at last come to mean to her a little of what it meant to him.
THREE:"May I?then John Oakley will be no niggard," his countenance losing much of the gloomy ferocity it had been marked with. "But, steward," he added, as they walked through the building, "the smoke and the flame are even now in my throat;you must give me wine, or I shall not be able to speak a word.""I'll have a good grain growing there in five yeard?an't you go doubting it. The ground wants working, that's all. And as fur not wanting the farm no bigger, that wur f?ather's ideaOdiam's mine now."
THREE:The hay-harvest of 1904 was a good oneof course Realf's hay had too much sorrel in it, there was always something wrong with Realf's cropsbut generally speaking the yield was plentiful and of good quality. Reuben rejoiced to feel the soft June sun on his back, and went out into the fields with his men, himself driving for some hours the horse-rake over the swathes, and drinking at noon his pint of beer in the shade of the waggon. In the evening the big hay-elevator hummed at Odiam, and old Backfield stood and watched it piling the greeny-brown ricks till darkness fell, and he went in to supper and the sleep of his old age.
