For the next few months Odiam was in a transitional state. It was gradually being divested of its old comfortable ways, and clad in new garments of endeavour. Gradually the life grew harder, and gradually the tense thought, the knife-edged ambition at the back of all the changes, came forward and asserted themselves openly.

Harry and his mother had not realised till then how hard Reuben could be. Hitherto they had never truly known him, for he had hidden in himself his dominant passion. But now it was nakedly displayed, and they began to glimpse his iron and steel through the elusive nebulousness that had veiled them—as one might see the body of a steam-engine emerge through the clouds of draping smoke its activity has flung round it.

They could not help wondering at his strenuousness, his unlimited capacity for work, though they failed to understand or sympathise with the object that inspired them. Blackman, grumbling and perplexed, had gone off early in March to the milder energies of Raisins Farm; Becky, for want of a place, had married the drover at Kitchenhour—and it was no empty boast of[Pg 34] Reuben\'s that he would take the greater part of their work on his own shoulders. From half-past four in the morning till nine at night he laboured almost without rest. He drove the cows to pasture, milked them, and stalled them—he followed the plough over the spring-sown crops, he groomed and watered the horses, he fed the fowls, watched the clutches, fattened capons for market—he cleaned the pigsty, and even built a new one in a couple of strenuous days—he bent his back over his spade among the roots, over his barrow, wheeling loads of manure—he was like a man who has been starved and at last finds a square meal before him. He had all the true workman\'s rewards—the heart-easing ache of tired muscles, the good bath of sweat in the sun\'s heat, the delicious sprawl, every sinew limp and throbbing, in his bed at nights—and then sleep, dreamless, healing, making new.

But though Reuben bore the brunt of the new enterprise, he had no intention of sparing others their part. All that he by any exertions could do himself he did, but the things which inevitably he could not compass, because he had only two hands, one back, one head, and seven days a week to work in, must be done by others. He showed himself unexpectedly stiff, and Mrs. Backfield and Harry found themselves obeying him as if he were not the son of the one and only a year older than the other. As a matter of fact, custom gave Reuben authority, in spite of his years. He was the master, the eldest son inheriting his father\'s lordship with his father\'s farm. Mrs. Backfield and Harry would have been censured by public opinion if they had set themselves against him.

Besides, what was the use?—it was only for a few months, and then Harry would be in a little house of his own, living very like his father, though more dreamily, more delicately. Then Mrs. Backfield would once more wear muslin aprons instead of sacking............