reins mended more than once. The whole ramshackle concern looked as if it
would presently fall to pieces, but the horse was in much too good a
condition.

When the four-in-hand had come within about a hundred yards, the farmer
pulled his left rein hard, and drew his gig right out of the road on to
the sward, and then stopped dead, to give the coach the full use of the
way. As it passed he took off his straw hat, and his wife stooped low as a
makeshift for bowing. An outsider might have thought that the aristocratic
coach would have gone by this extremely humble couple without so much as
noticing it. But the gentleman who was driving lifted his hat to the dowdy
lady, with a gesture of marked politeness, and a young and
elegantly-dressed lady, his sister, nodded and smiled, and waved her hand
to her. After the coach had rolled some fifty yards away, the farmer
pulled into the road, and went on through the cloud of dust it had left
behind it, with a complacent smile upon his hard and weather-worn
features. 'A' be a nice young gentleman, the Honourable be,' said he
presently. 'So be Lady Blanche,' replied his wife, lifting her veil and
looking back after the four-in-hand. 'I'm sure her smile's that sweet it
be a pleasure for to see her.'

Half a mile farther the farmer drew out of the road again, drove close to
the hedge, stopped, and stood up to look over. A strongly-built young man,
who had been driving the reaping machine in his shirt-sleeves, alighted
from his seat and came across to the hedge.

'Goes very well to-day,' he said, meaning that the machine answered.

'You be got into a good upstanding piece, John,' replied the old man
sharply in his thin jerky voice, which curiously contrasted with his still