The girls cried a great deal at their grandmother\'s death—she had never taken up enough room in the boys\' lives for them to miss her much. As for Reuben,[Pg 203] though he had been fond of her, he could not sincerely regret her, since for the last few months she had, so to speak, been carried on entirely at a loss.

He needed every penny and every minute more desperately than ever, for Grandturzel ran Odiam closer and closer in the race. Realf now plainly saw how matters stood. As yet there was no open breach between him and Reuben—when one of them came into the public-house the other always waited a decent interval before clearing out—but if there was no open breach, there was open rivalry. All the neighbourhood knew of it, and many a bet was made.

The odds were generally on Reuben. It was felt that a certain unscrupulousness was necessary to the job, and in that Backfield had the advantage. "Young Realf wudn\'t hurt a fly," his champions had to acknowledge. Though the money was with Reuben, the sympathy was mostly with Realf, for the former\'s dealings had scarcely made him popular. He was a hard man to his customers, he never let them owe him for grain or roots or fodder; his farm-hands, when drunk, spoke of him as a monster, and a not very tender-hearted peasantry worked itself sentimental over his treatment of his children.

For some months the antagonism between Odiam and Grandturzel remained in this polite state, most of the fighting being done by their champions. The landlord of the Cocks grew quite tired of chucking out Odiamites and Grandturzelites who could not, like their leaders, confine their war to words. But it only wanted some cause, however trivial, to make the principals show their fists. The time that Reuben would stay in the bar after Realf had entered it grew shorter and shorter, and his pretexts for leaving more and more flimsy. Realf himself, though a genial, good-tempered young man, could not help resenting the scorn with which he was treated. He once told Ginner that Backfield was an uncivilised[Pg 204] brute, and Ginner took care to forward this remark to the proper quarter.

At last the gods, who are more open-handed than ungrateful people suppose, took pity on the rivals, and gave them something to fight about. The pretext was in itself trivial, but when the gunpowder is laid nothing bigger than a match is needed. This particular pretext was a barrow of roots which had been ordered from Kitchenhour by Reuben and sent by mistake to Grandturzel. Realf\'s shepherd, not seeing any cause for doubt, gave the roots as winter fodder to his ewes, and said nothing about them. When Reuben tramped over to Kitchenhour and asked furiously why his roots had never been sent, the mistake was discovered. He came home by Grandturzel, and found his precious roots, all thrown out on the fields, being nibbled by Realf\'s ewes.

Realf himself was away, but Reuben left such a stinging message for him, that apology was impossible except in a form that could only be regarded as a fresh insult. An apology in this shape reached Odiam at dinner-time, and Reuben at once sent off Beatup with an acceptance of it that was very nearly obscene. The result was that Realf himself arrived about three o\'clock furiously demanding an explanation of his neighbour\'s insulting conduct.

The two men met in the kitchen, Peter backing up his father, and for a long time the scene was stormy, the word "roots" whirling about the conversation, with the prefix "my good" or "your hemmed" as the case might be. Realf was genuinely angry—Reuben\'s attitude of mingled truculence and scorn had wounded even his easy pride.

"You\'re justabout afeard of me, that\'s wot you are. You think I\'ll bust up your old farm and show myself a better man than you. You\'re afeard of me............