The Crimean War had meant the stoppage for a time of Russian grain supplies, and Reuben had taken every advantage of this. He had some forty acres under grain cultivation, mostly oats, but also some good kinds of wheat and barley. In rotation with these were peas and clover, turnips and mangolds. He also had twenty acres of hops—the rest was pasture for his neat Dutch and Jersey cows, which, with the orchard and poultry yard, were still the most profitable if not the most glorious of his exploits. The bull had not proved so splendid an investment as he had hoped; the farmers of the district could not afford big hiring fees, and at present his space was too limited for extensive breeding of his own stock. However, he exhibited Alfriston King at Lewes Agricultural Show, and won a first prize for him. The next year he sold him to a big cattle breeder down Horeham way, and bought a cheaper but more serviceable animal for his own business.

His sons were now growing up—Albert was nearly eighteen, and Peter, though a year younger, looked a full-grown man, with his immense build and dark hairy skin. Pete was still the most satisfactory of Reuben\'s children, he had a huge and glad capacity for work, and took a real interest in Odiam\'s progress, though it was not his life, as it was his father\'s. It was strange, Reuben thought, that none of the other boys seemed to have a glimmer of enthusiasm. Though they had grown up under the shadow of Boarzell, and from their earliest childhood taken part in the struggle, they seemed still to think more about the ordinary things of young men\'s lives than the great victory before them. It was disappointing. Of course one expected it of girls, but Reuben\'s heart ached a little because the men children on whom he had set such hope and store cared[Pg 127] so little about what was life itself to him. It is true that Robert worked well, nearly as well as Pete, but that was only because he was of a docile, tractable nature. He did not share his father\'s dreams—Boarzell to him was only a piece of waste ground with some trees on it.

As for Albert and Richard, they did not even work well, and they grumbled and shirked as much as they dared. They had ambitions, but so utterly at variance with Odiam\'s as to be worse than none. Albert wanted to be a poet and Richard to be a gentleman.

What there was in either Reuben or Naomi to make a poet of their eldest son would be hard to say. Perhaps it was the glow of their young love, so golden and romantic during the first year of their marriage. If so, there was something of bitter irony in this survival and transmutation of it. Odiam was no place for poets, and Reuben tried by every means in his power to knock the poetry out of Albert. It was not the actual poetry he objected to so much as the vices which went with it—forgetfulness, unpracticalness, negligence. Albert would sometimes lose quite half an hour\'s work by falling into a dream, he also played truant on occasions, and would disappear for hours, indeed now and then for a day or more, wandering in the fields an............