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Updated: May 11, 2025
I'll wait till the middle of the month before turnen out. Eight heifers and three bulls there be." "Well, I'll see what they look like. Morning, Katie!" Katie Jacka, who had come out to the milking, responded eagerly to the new master and planked down stool and pails. Ishmael and John-James stood watching for a few minutes.
It was John-James who brought about the feminine factor in Ishmael's days, some six months after the Vicarage period had begun. It was early spring, the first rathe-primroses were showing their milk-fair faces on the cliff, and the light-green leaves were beginning to uncrumple on the wind-wilted elders, when John-James appeared on a mission of his own at the Vicarage.
"You must come up the Fair with me next time, John-James," suggested Ishmael, "and then we'll see. Come and show me the calves now...."
"By the way," he said, "I hate to have to tell you, but I hear, and I'm afraid it's true, that Archelaus is starting bush-beating on the estate again. I met John-Willy Jacka coming back from the direction of the wood late one night with a suspicious-looking sack and a bludgeon, and next day I asked John-James if he knew anything. He didn't give anyone away, but I gathered "
Maybe you'd like to come and have a try at it, if you'm not gwain to be above turnen your own hand to work?" Ishmael had a moment's qualm. What ploughing he had done had been but slight, and he was not free from an uneasy impression that John-James was laying a trap for him into which he would not be sorry to see him fall.
John-James had seemed so unaltered that his grip of the hand, as casual as though Ishmael were any acquaintance just back from a day's excursion, had been a relief.
"That's right enough," agreed John-James; "it's only Vassie you can help. And helpen her will help your plan too, won't it? For it'll make one of his own kind in his family. And she's gwain to be 'ansome, she is." "You're quite right, John-James, and I'm obliged to you for the suggestion. I don't think I can supply an education much good to a young lady, but we'll see what can be done."
John-James stood at ease, and slowly some faint trace of a change of expression appeared on his immobile features. "I reckon thee'll do, lad," was all he said; but Ishmael felt his heart give an upleap of triumph; he knew he had made his first conquest. As he and John-James went into breakfast side by side he felt quite equal to meeting Annie unperturbed.
"Go maken it so fine it'll be a pretty place for gentry, s'pose," he said; "be shamed to see I about the place then, I reckon." Ishmael laughed joyously at him. "Don't be an ass, John-James," he said; and it was the first time he had been able to meet any little speech of the kind without strain.
He looked sometimes at John-James, sitting so placidly opposite him at meals, and wondered about him, whether his physical nature did not perhaps follow his mental and remain untroubled. Yet this thing seemed in every man.... He wondered, but never asked, and, by dint of hard work and a resolute cleansing of his mind, kept the thing at bay.
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