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Faint as it is, it sways the heavy laden brome grass, but is not strong enough to lift a ball of thistledown from the bennets among which it is entangled. How swiftly the much-desired summer comes upon us! Even with the reapers at work before one it is difficult to realise that it has not only come, but will soon be passing away.
'That was clover, that warm whiff on the breeze, he remarked; 'and those are cows we hear cropping the grass behind us and blowing softly between mouthfuls. There is a sound of distant reapers, and yonder rises a blue line of cottage smoke against the woodland. The river runs somewhere close by, for I hear the call of a moorhen, and I see by your build that you're a freshwater mariner.
It is no more welcome to the farmer than the Poppy and the Charlock are. It is a perennial, and therefore difficult to get rid of. Moreover when we pull up a stem we find it quite hard work, it is so tough. These tough stems blunt the sickles of the reapers and the knives of the reaping machine. To us it is only a very beautiful flower.
Be it known to your charity, that being dull in intellect and rude of speech, I have presumed to deliver these things in the Latin tongue, not trusting to my own learning, which is little or none at all, but partly from traditions of our ancestors, partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans, and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymus, Prosper, Eusebius, and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons, although our enemies, not following my own inclinations, but, to the best of my ability, obeying the commands of my seniors; I have lispingly put together this history from various sources, and have endeavored, from shame, to deliver down to posterity the few remaining ears of corn about past transactions, that they might not be trodden under foot, seeing that an ample crop has been snatched away already by the hostile reapers of foreign nations.
Why should we be at the trouble of undertaking a hot, dusty railway journey in search of Gaelic tombs, Gothic churches, or Merovingian remains when we have the essence of deliciousness at our very door? waving fields of ripe corn, amid which the reapers in twos and threes are at work picturesque figures that seemed to have walked out of Millet's canvas lines of poplars along the curling river, beyond hills covered with woods, a clustering village, or a chateau, here and there.
So they skipped and hopped and munched clover until the dawn sent them scudding away to their homes. Well, at last, upon a sunny June morning, the lonely field was no longer lonely, neither was it quiet; for the grain was ripe and the reapers had come. Yes, the reapers had come, and with them came Nip.
Gray mists were drifting silently across the woods and the wide stubbles of the now shaven cornfield, where white lines of reapers were at work, as the morning cleared, making and stacking the sheaves. After a stormy night the garden was strewn with débris, and here and there noiseless prophetic showers of leaves were dropping on the lawn.
The workmen gather the last four sheaves from the field, and, fastening them in the form of a cross, carry them, followed by a long procession of dusky reapers, up the ascent to the church. As they approach, the bells burst out in a joyous peal, and from the mission doors the padres come forth, one bearing a cross, another the banner of the Virgin. A choir of Indian boys follows, chanting a hymn.
Having done this, Silly Catharine hid the barrel away with great precipitation; and, determined to leave nothing else undone, she called the reapers and bid them go directly to the large field and reap the wheat. Then she went back, and began eating her dinner, saying, "Thank heaven, I have a good dinner to sit down to, at least; there are always cabbages enough!"
And the servant that was set over the reapers answered and said, "It is the Moabitish damsel that came back with Naomi out of the country of Moab. And she said, 'I pray you, let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves. So she came, and hath continued even from the morning until now, that she tarried a little in the house." Then said Boaz unto Ruth, "Hearest thou not, my daughter?
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