"Has old Burton said anything?"

"I'm getting on. I can drive as straight a furrow as any man in
Gloucestershire. I've told my father that. He detests me; but he'd say
you ought to work up from the plough-tail, if you _must_ farm. He turned
all of us through his workshops before he took us into the business. He
liked to see us soaked in dirt and oil, crawling on our stomachs under
his engines. He'd simply love to see me here standing up to my knees in
wet cow-dung."

"He won't mind your leaving him?"

"Not if I make a good thing out of this. Anyhow he knows he can't keep me
off it. If I can't fight I'll farm. It's in my blood and nerves and
memory. He sits there selling motor cars, but his people were fighting
men. They fought to get land; they fought to keep it. My mother's people,
the Rodens, were yeoman farmers. That's why my furrow's so straight."

"And that's why you came here?"

"No. That isn't why."

"Aren't you glad you came? Did you ever feel anything like the
peace of it?"

"It's not the peace of it I want, Charlotte,--Jeanne, I mean. It's
the fight. Fighting with things that would kill you if you didn't.
Wounding the earth to sow in it and make it feed you. Ploughing,
Charlotte--Jeanne. Feeling the thrust and the drive through, and the
thing listing over on the slope. Seeing the steel blade shine, and the