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But Miss Leighton isn't as strong as I am." Her eyes wandered thoughtfully over the wheat-field, ablaze under the level gold of the sun. Then she suddenly smiled. "I expect you think it a queer business, Mr. Hastings, women taking to farming?" "Well, it's new, you see, Miss Henderson." "I believe it's going to be very common. Why shouldn't the women do it!" She frowned a little.
But, just as they were descending upon the wheat-field, up flew the wood-pigeons with such a terrible clangour of their strong wings, and facing towards them, showed such a determination to fight to the last breath, that the peewits, who were never very celebrated for their courage, turned tail, and began to retreat.
Shorn of our gauds and baubles, we were primitive man and woman, together: our world for the hour was the deserted farm-house, the slope of wheat-field that led to the road, the woodland lot, the pasture. We breakfasted together across the homely table.
In a Greek epigram she is described as "she who has given birth to the fruits of the earth," and "the mother of the ears of corn"; and in a hymn composed in her honour she speaks of herself as "queen of the wheat-field," and is described as "charged with the care of the fruitful furrow's wheat-rich path."
Our wheat-field was the first that was sown in the neighborhood. The deer soon found it and came in every night to feast, but it was eight or nine years before we ever disturbed them. David then killed one deer, the only one killed by any of our family. He went out shortly after sundown at the time of full moon to one of our wheat-fields, carrying a double-barreled shotgun loaded with buckshot.
While we stood in the wheat-field, Philip remarked: "We mustn't stay long before going back to the Crag; but I'll call the doe I sent you from this 'form, and perhaps you'll see one of her tricks to mislead a fox as she returns home. She's very careful of her young till they're about a fortnight old, though soon afterwards she lets them 'fend' for themselves.
I do not mean that some sat down; I mean that the whole column lay flat in the road. The officers also, those that were not mounted, would tumble on the grass or into the wheat-field and lie on their backs, their arms flung out like dead men. To the fact that they were lying on their field-glasses, holsters, swords, and water- bottles they appeared indifferent.
Before I could draw back, a man thrust through the undergrowth, challenging me with a pistol. Two other men followed him, talking in low, angry tones. They came all round me with very murderous looks. They were the filthiest looking scarecrows ever seen out of a wheat-field. "Why," said one of them, lowering his pistol, "it be the Duke's young man, as we seed at Lyme."
The harvest was in full swing, and as the dusk was filling, Janet Leighton, who had just returned herself from the fields, could watch the scene going on in the wheat-field beyond the farm-yard, where, as the reaping machine steadily pared away the remaining square of wheat, two or three men and boys with guns lay in wait outside the square for the rabbits as they bolted from their fast lessening shelter.
He seemed to look as coolly upon the exquisite architectural beauty, and to contemplate the age of the building as quietly, as a farmer would survey his promising wheat-field. I reminded him that I came from a land where such things do not abound, and where one cannot gratify the desire to look upon that which is not only ancient, but around which cluster the choicest historical associations.
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