and steaming from the hay-box to which she had consigned them after the
midday dinner. A small oil-lamp had been lit, and through the open
windows afterglow and moonrise streamed in to mingle with its light.
There was a pot of flowers on the table--purple scabious, and tall
cow-parsley, gathered from the orchard, where no one had yet had time to
cut the ragged hay beneath the trees.

The scene was typical of a new England. Women governing--and women
serving--they were all alike making their way through new paths to new
ends. It was no household in the ordinary sense. The man was wanting. The
two elder women were bound to the two younger by a purely business tie,
which might or might not develop into something more personal. The two
land-lasses had come to supper in their tunics and breeches, while Rachel
Henderson and Janet had now both put on the coloured overalls which
disguised the masculine garb beneath, and gave them something of the
usual feminine air. Rachel's overall, indeed, was both pretty and
artistic, embroidered a little here and there, and showing a sunburnt
throat beneath the rounded chin.

The talk turned on the day's work, the weather prospects, the vagaries of
the cows at milking time, and those horrid little pests the "harvesters,"
which haunt the chalk soils. The two "hands" were clear by now that they
liked Miss Leighton the best of the two ladies, they hardly knew why.
Betty Rolfe, the younger of them, who came from Ralstone, was a taking
creature, with deep black, or rather violet, eyes, small features framed
in curly hair, and the bloom of ripe fruit. She was naturally full of
laughter and talk, and only spoilt by her discoloured and uneven teeth,
which showed the usual English neglect of such things in childhood.

Her companion, Jenny Harberton, was a much more ordinary type, with broad