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Then the low scandals of the village talked over from cottage to cottage, the rude jokes of the hayfield, the general looseness and indifference which prevail as to morality, all prepare the girl for the too common fall. If she remains at home and works in the fields after the age of fifteen, unless uncommonly strong-minded, it is an open question whether she will or will not succumb.
Practically, I think the relations between peasants and nobles render her sacrifices unavailing. For example: one of the peasant women having been taken ill, there was a good deal of sickness in the village, she went to the hayfield to do the woman's work and prevent the forfeit of fifteen or twenty cents, the price of the day's labor. We strolled out to find her.
Oftentimes it would happen that in summer we had turned aside from the road, or perhaps the road itself forced us to pass a farm-house from which the family might be absent in the hayfield. Unhappily the dogs in such a case are often left behind. That result it was which uniformly brought us back to a sense of our own wrong, and finally of our rights.
"Not a bit; it's rained so hard all this week that I haven't had a bit of exercise, and I'm getting cross." "Cross! I'd like to see you once! It still looks kinder thunderous to me off in the West, so don't go far." "I won't, I promise; I'll be back by supper-time. There's Austin, just up from the hayfield I'll get him to saddle for me." And Sylvia ran quickly towards the barn.
Then, remembering Sylvia, Molly went through a casual introduction. He's really awfully nice, though so plain to look at." She went on, still astonished, "But how'd you get here?" "Why, how does anybody in Vermont get to a forest fire?" he answered. "We were out in the hayfield, saw the smoke, left the horses, grabbed what tools we could find, and beat it through the woods.
"Monsieur, you are very good to me." But I was in no holiday humor, so only shrugged, and told him to unload the bales. He smiled again, nodding, and jumped to the shore with buoyancy that was an affront to our numbed muscles. But once at work he was as useless as a sailor in a hayfield. He could lift nothing, and he was hopelessly under foot. I bade him stand aside, and I prayed for patience.
Lilac felt hurt and disappointed. It was a busier time than usual at the farm just now, though there was always plenty for everyone to do. It was hay harvest and there were extra hands at work, extra cooking to do, and many journeys to be made to and from the hayfield. Lilac was on the run from morning till night, and even Bella and Agnetta were obliged to bestir themselves a little.
And I now found out what was the matter. The people had objected the night before to our camping near the yurts, for it was their hayfield, theirs by the custom which forbids encroaching on the land near a settlement, but the Russians had persisted, and now, in their helpless anger, they were an aged lama and an old woman, they refused to sell us wood.
There must be sixty here." "More like a hundred," grunted "Bart" Cloud, not yet won over to good temper. "Every little freshman thinks he can buy a pair of moleskins and be a football man. Look at that fellow over yonder, the one with the baggy trousers and straw hat. The idea of that fellow coming down here just out of the hayfield and having the cheek to report for football practice!
Bevis clapped his hands with delight, and was just going to stand up, when something caught him by the ankles; he looked round, and it was the bailiff, who had had an eye on him all the time from the hayfield. Bevis kicked and struggled, but it was no use; the bailiff carried him home, and then went back with a bill-hook, and cutting a thorn bush, stopped up the gap in the hedge.
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