In the autumn Reuben bought ten more acres of Boarzell—a better piece of land than the first, more sheltered, with more clay in the soil. Hops would do well on the lower part of it down by the brook.

He also bought three Jersey cows; they would improve the small dairy business he had established, and their milk would be good for Naomi. His watchfulness of his wife had now almost become tyranny. He scolded her if she stooped to pick up her scissors, and would not let her walk even in the garden without him.

Naomi submitted languidly. Her days passed in a comfortable heaviness, and though she occasionally felt bored, on the whole she enjoyed being fussed over and waited on. During those months her relations with Reuben\'s mother became subtly changed. Before her marriage there had been a certain friendship and equality between them, but now the elder woman took more the place of a servant. It was not because she waited on Naomi, fetched and carried—Reuben did that, and was her master still. It was rather something in her whole attitude. She had ceased to confide in Naomi, ceased perhaps to care for her very much, and this gave a certain menial touch to her services. It would be hard[Pg 83] to say what had separated the two women—perhaps it was because one toiled all day while the other lay idle, perhaps it was a twinge of maternal jealousy on Mrs. Backfield\'s part, for Reuben was beginning to notice her less and less. After a time Naomi realised this estrangement, and though at first she did not care, later on it came to distress her. Somehow she did not like the idea of being without a woman associate—in spite of her love for Reuben, now more passive and more languid, like every other emotion, she craved instinctively for someone of her own sex in whom she could confide and on whom she could re............