THREE:So Realf's answer took the form of an extra cowman, whereupon Reuben hired a couple of new hands, causing his family to leap secretly and silently for joy and to bless the man who by his rivalry had lightened their yoke. As a matter of fact, Reuben would have been forced to engage one man, anyhow; for the new piece of land had at once to be prepared for cultivation, and gave even more trouble than the pieces which had already been cultivated but showed a distressing proneness to relapse into savagery. The lower slope of Boarzell was now covered with fields, where corn grew, as the neighbours said, "if one wur careful not to spik too loud," and the ewes could pasture safely if their shepherd were[Pg 210] watchful. But it somehow seemed as if all these things were only on sufferance, and that directly Reuben rested his tired arm Boarzell would snatch them back to itself, to be its own for ever.
ONE:His mind painted him a picture it had never dared paint beforethe comfortable red house basking in sunshine, with a garden full of flowers, a cow or two at pasture in the meadow, the little hop-field his only tilthhis dear frail wife sitting in the porch, his children playing at her feet or reading at her kneeperhaps they were hers too, perhaps they were not. He saw himself contented, growing stout, wanting nothing he hadn't got, so having nothing he didn't want ... he was leaning over her chair, and gazing away into the southern distance where Boarzell lay against the sky, all patched with heather and thorns, all golden with gorse, unirrigated, uncultivated, without furrow or fence....Reuben was standing by the table, erect, and somehow dignified in spite of the mess he was in.
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