explaining.

During the summer holidays, in haying and harvest time, Ivo was almost
constantly afield with Nat. There his real life seemed to begin; and,
when he looked upward, the blue of his eyes was like a drop fallen from
the sky which sprang its broad arch so serenely over the busy haunts of
men; and it seemed as if this bit of heaven, straying upon earth,

"but long'd to flee
Back to its native mansion."

Something of this kind glimmered through Nat's thoughts one day when he
took Ivo by the chin and kissed him fervently on the eyelids. The next
moment he was ashamed of this tenderness, and teased Ivo and playfully
struck him.

When the cows were hooked up, Ivo was always at hand, and took pains to
lay the cushion firmly on the horns of the heifer: he was glad that the
wooden yoke was not made to lie immediately on the poor beast's
forehead. In the field he would stand near the cows and chase the flies
away with a bough. Nat always encouraged him in this attention to the
poor defenceless slaves.

Often Ivo and Emmerence would stand and dance on the wagon long before
the cows or the dun were hooked up: then they would ride to the field,
gather the hay into heaps, and push each other into it.

Whenever Nat went afield, Ivo stood by him in the wagon. Sometimes he
would sit up there alone, with his hands in his lap, and as his body
was jolted by the motion of the wagon his heart would leap within him.
He looked over the meads with a dreamy air. Who can tell the silent
life beating in a child's breast at such a moment?

Nor did Ivo fail to practise charity in his early youth. Emmerence,
being a child of poor parents, had to glean after the harvest. Ivo
asked his mother to make him a little sack, which he hung around his
neck and went about gleaning for Emmerence. When his mother gave him
the sack, she warned him not to let his father see it, as he would
scold; for it is not proper for a child whose parents are not poor to
go gleaning. Ivo looked wonderingly at his mother, and a deep sorrow
shone out of his eye; but it did not long remain. With a joy till then
unknown to him, he walked barefoot through the prickly stubble and
gleaned a fine bagful of barley for Emmerence. He was by when Emmerence
took a part of it to feed her duckies with, and mimicked them as they
waddled here and there, grabbing at the grains.

One day Ivo and Nat were in the field. The dun--a fine s