Harvest | Page 4

distant stretches of the plain. There was not another house, not even a cottage, anywhere in sight. The village had disappeared. She herself, in the old wagonette, seemed the only living thing.
No, there was a man emerging from the farm-gate, and coming to meet her--the bailiff, George Hastings. She had only seen him once before, on her first hurried visit, when, after getting a rough estimate from him of the repairs necessary to the house and buildings, she had made up her mind to take the farm, if the landlord would agree to do them.
"Yon's Muster Hastings," said Jonathan Webb, turning on her a benevolent and wrinkled countenance, with two bright red spots in the midst of each weather-beaten cheek. Miss Henderson again noticed the observant curiosity in the old man's eyes. Everybody, indeed, seemed to look at her with the same expression. As a woman farmer she was no doubt just a freak, a sport, in the eyes of the village. Well, she prophesied they would take her seriously before long.
"I'm afraid I haven't as much to show you, miss, as I'd like," said Hastings, as he helped her to alight. "It's cruel work nowadays trying to do anything of this kind. Two of the men that began work last week have been called up, and there's another been just 'ticed away from me this week. The wages that some people about will give are just mad!" He threw up his hands. "Colonel Shepherd says he can't compete."
Miss Henderson replied civilly but decidedly that somehow or other the work would have to be done. If Colonel Shepherd couldn't find the wages, she must pay the difference. Get in some time, during August, she must.
The bailiff looked at her with a little sluggish surprise. He was not used to being hustled, still less to persons who were ready to pay rather than be kept waiting. He murmured that he dared say it would be all right, and she must come and look.
They turned to the right up a stony pitch, through a dilapidated gate, and so into the quadrangle of the farm. To the left was a long row of open cow-sheds, then cow-houses and barns, the stables, a large shed in which stood an old and broken farm cart, and finally the house, fronting the barns.
The house was little more than a large cottage built in the shabbiest way forty years ago, and of far less dignity than the fine old barn on which it looked. It abutted at one end on the cart-shed, and between it and the line of cow-sheds was the gate into the farmyard.
Miss Henderson stepped up to the house and looked at it.
"It is a poor place!" she said discontentedly; "and those men don't seem to have done much to it yet."
Hastings admitted it. But they had done a little, he said, shamefacedly, and he unlocked the door. Miss Henderson lingered outside a moment.
"I never noticed," she said, "that the living room goes right through. What draughts there'll be in the winter!"
For as she stood looking into the curtainless window that fronted the farm-yard, she saw through it a further window at the back of the room, and beyond that a tree. Both windows were large and seemed to take up most of the wall on either side of the small room. The effect was peculiarly comfortless, as though no one living in the room could possibly enjoy any shred of privacy. There were no cosy corners in it anywhere, and Miss Henderson's fancy imagined rows of faces looking in.
Inside a little papering and whitewashing had been done, but certainly the place looked remarkably unviting. A narrow passage ran from front to back, on one side of which was the living room with the two windows, while on the other were the kitchen and scullery. Upstairs there were two good-sized bedrooms with a small third room in a lean-to at the back, the lower part of which was occupied by a wash-house. Through the windows could be seen a neglected bit of garden, and an untidy orchard.
But when she had wandered about the rooms a little, Rachel Henderson's naturally buoyant temperament reasserted itself. She had brought some bright patterns of distemper with her which she gave to Hastings with precise instructions. She had visions of casement curtains to hide the nakedness of the big windows with warm serge curtains to draw over them in the winter. The floors must be stained. There should be a deep Indian-red drugget in the sitting-room, with pigeon-blue walls, and she thought complacently of the bits of old furniture she had been collecting, which were stored in a friend's flat in town. An old dresser, a grandfather's clock, some bits of brass, two arm-chairs, an old oak table--it would