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There was to be an early dinner out in tents at five; and after dinner men and women were to walk about, or dance, or make love or hay, as suited them. The haycocks, however, were ready prepared, while it was expected that they should bring the love with them. Phineas, knowing that he should meet Violet Effingham, took a great deal with him ready made.
It is quite right that there should be one clergyman to every parish interpreting the Scriptures after a particular manner, ruled by a regular hierarchy, and paid with a rich proportion of haycocks and wheatsheafs.
Rambling about through the woods and over the fields, no matter where, it was all enchanting; helping Alice garden; helping Thomas make hay, and the mischief they did his haycocks by tumbling upon them, and the patience with which he bore it; the looking for eggs; the helping Margery to churn, and the helping each other to set tables; the pleasant mornings, and pleasant evenings, and pleasant mid-days it cannot be told.
It sounded a merry tintinnabulation on Samantha's milk-pans, wafted the scent of dripping honeysuckle into the farmhouse windows, and drenched the night-caps in which prudent farmers had dressed their haycocks. Next morning, the green world stood on tiptoe to welcome the victorious sun, and every little leaf shone as a child's eyes might shine at the remembrance of a joy just past.
This seemed to divert him exceedingly; and although we, seeing so grand a gentleman looking at us, were for suspending our Tomfoolery, and stood, to say the truth, rather shamefaced than otherwise among the haycocks, he bade us with cheery and encouraging words to proceed, and laughed to see us so sparring at one another, till his sides shook again.
"I have far too much, and we settled at Chelsea last spring that three hundred a year is necessary to set a man on his feet. What I give will bring in a hundred and fifty between two. It isn't enough." He could not recover. He was not angry or even shocked, and he saw that Helen would still have plenty to live on. But it amazed him to think what haycocks people can make of their lives.
And Yillah pining for the shore, we turned our prow due west, and next morning came in sight of land. It was innumerable islands; lifting themselves bluely through the azure air, and looking upon the distant sea, like haycocks in a hazy field. Towering above all, and mid-most, rose a mighty peak; one fleecy cloud sloping against its summit; a column wreathed.
The meadows were newly mown, and the air was fragrant with the grass, stretching in long winrows among the brown bowlders, or capped with canvas in the little haycocks it had been gathered into the day before.
She knew it all by heart, the low hillocks crowned with clusters of shaggy oaks still thick with unshed leaves, the strips of salt marsh with the haycocks like gigantic beehives, the peeps of blue sea, sail-dotted or crossed by a thin line of smoke, and the neat little towns so characteristic of southern New England. Impulsively she turned to her husband. "Oh, don't you pity Hope, Billy?"
"Come and take a turn among the haycocks," he said. "Frank declares," said Lady Mabel, "that the hay is hired for the occasion. I wonder whether that is true." "Anybody can see," said Tregear, "that it has not been cut off the grass it stands upon." "If I could find Mrs. Montacute Jones I'd ask her where she got it," said Lady Mabel. "Are you coming?" asked Silverbridge impatiently.
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