All day long it had been full of active cheerful life. It and
the fields were happy in the animating harvest toil. Men with
harvesters' hats, women with sunbonnets, cracked their rustic jokes,
laughed, and sang at their labor; Mavis cooked food, filled the big
white bobs with beer, sent out bannocks and tin bottles of tea; Dale's
children had rakes and played at hay-making. Only the master, the
husband, the father, was unhappy.
No one knew it, of course. To other people he appeared to be just the
same as usual, naturally preoccupied with thoughts about the weather
as one always is at grass-cutting time, giving his orders firmly, and
seeing that they were obeyed promptly, smiling and nodding when you
showed yourself handy, frowning and looking rather black if you did
anything "okkard or feckless." Who could have guessed, as he looked at
his watch and then at the sky, that he was thinking: "It wants five
minutes of noon, and she is prob'ly out on what they term an
esplanade. There is a nice breeze down there, comin' to her over the
waater, blowin' her hair a bit loose, flappin' her skirts, sendin' out
her neck ribbon like a little flag behind her. It's all jolly, wi' the
mil'tary band, an' the smell o' the waves, an' crowds an' crowds o'
people--an' she won't have occasion to think o' me.
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