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Hob the laird was, indeed, essentially a decent man. An elder of the Kirk, nobody had heard an oath upon his lips, save, perhaps, thrice or so at the sheep-washing, since the chase of his father's murderers. The figure he had shown on that eventful night disappeared as if swallowed by a trap.
Then there is the annual sheep-washing, when on a warm day in May or early June the whole herd is driven a mile or more to a suitable pool in the creek, and one by one doused and washed and rinsed in the water. We used to wash below an old grist-mill, and it was a pleasing spectacle, the mill, the dam, the overhanging rocks and trees, the round, deep pool, and the huddled and frightened sheep.
I heard the sheep before, but how could I imagine that you, Dorothy, and three boys as big as cockerels, were sheep-washing? It's the most preposterous thing I ever heard of!", "Well, I can't help being a woman, and the sheep had to be washed. I think there ought to be more men in the world when half of them are preaching and fighting."
and his picture of the Roman sheep-washing recalled, when we read it, similar scenes in the Country Brook. On its banks we could always find the earliest and the latest wild flowers, from the pale blue, three- lobed hepatica, and small, delicate wood-anemone, to the yellow bloom of the witch-hazel burning in the leafless October woods.
He had by this time grown used to being in love; the passion now startled him less even when it tortured him more, and he felt himself adequate to the situation. On inquiring for her at her house they had told him she was at the sheepwashing, and he went off to seek her there. The sheep-washing pool was a perfectly circular basin of brickwork in the meadows, full of the clearest water.
"You see the artfulness? Why, 'twas about being baily really; but I didn't put it so plain that she could understand my meaning, so I could lay it on all the stronger. That was my depth! ... However, let her marry an she will. Perhaps 'tis high time. I believe Farmer Boldwood kissed her behind the spear-bed at the sheep-washing t'other day that I do." "What a lie!" said Gabriel.
And indeed they have a very rude manner of teaching children to swim there; for the big boys take the little boys, and put them through a certain process, which they grimly call 'sheep-washing. In the third meadow from the gate of the school, going up the river, there is a fine pool in the Lowman, where the Taunton brook comes in, and they call it the Taunton Pool.
"I don't know," said John, at last, as Fairy repeated her question. "By the bye, how long have I been here exactly?" asked Fairy. "Let me see; twelve years last shearing-time," said the shepherd, whose dates were few and simple, sheep-washing, shearing, lambing, and next and last sheepfair being the principal. "But I want to know the day of the month; and I'll tell you why.
Perhaps 'tis high time. I believe Farmer Boldwood kissed her behind the spear-bed at the sheep-washing t'other day that I do." "What a lie!" said Gabriel. "Ah, neighbour Oak how'st know?" said, Henery, mildly. "Because she told me all that passed," said Oak, with a pharisaical sense that he was not as other shearers in this matter.
There are no invidious distinctions as to caste, colour, or nationality. Every one is a man and a brother at sheep-washing. Wage, one pound per week; wood, water, tents and food "A LA DISCRETION." Their accounts are simple: so many weeks, so many pounds; store account, so much; hospital? well, five shillings; cheque, good-morning.
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