Harry could not help laughing at the faces of Juglery and Elphick when he told them he meant to plough the Sunk Field.

“Br?ak up grass, Mus’ Harry!”

“Surelye! They’re asking farmers all over the country to grow more wheat.”

“Does Maaster know as you mean to plough the Sunk?”

“Reckon he does. I cud never do it wudout he let me.”

“Well,” said old Juglery, “I’ve bin on farm-work man and boy these dunnamany year, and I’ve only bruk up grass two times, and no good come of it, nuther. Wunst it wur fur oald Mus’ Backfield up at Odiam, him wot caum to nighe a hundred year, and then took a fit last fall and died of joy when he heard as wheat wur ninety shillings a quarter. T’other wur pore young Mus’ Pix of the Trulilows, and he bruk up a valiant pasture, and the oats caum up crawling about like pease, and each had a gurt squlgy root lik a pertater. I says to him, being young and joking like in those days, ‘You’re unaccountable lucky,’ says I, ‘to grow pease and pertaters on the same stalk,’ but he took it to heart, and went and shot himself in the oast. So you see as boath the yeomen I bruk up grass fur died, one o’ joy and t’other o’ sorrow.”

“Well, I shan’t die of nuther, and we’ll have the plough out Thursday if the weather hoalds.”

The men were getting used to being ordered about by Harry. Mus’ Beatup’s chill had gone off in a twisting bout of rheumatism, which returned every now and then with damp weather. He spent, therefore, a good deal of time in the house, with sometimes a hobble as far as the Rifle Volunteer, appearing only in the dry, frosty weather [123] when little could be done with harrow or plough. However, when neighbouring farmers began to remark on the enterprise of Worge, he was careful to take the credit to himself—indeed he almost fancied that it was his own doing, for Harry, who could have done nothing without his authority, was careful to consult him on every occasion, and it was Mus’ Beatup who ordered the grain and checked the accounts, with many groans and dismal foretellings.

Those were good days for Harry, behind his plough. Under the soft grey spring sky, rifted and stroked by wandering primrose lights, through the damp air that smelled of living mould, over the brown earth that rolled and sprayed like a wave from the driving coulter, he toiled sweating in the raw March cold. The smell of earth, the smell of his own sweat, the smell of the sweat of his horses hung thick over the plough, but e............