She smiled to see how immense the legs were, and how tiny the body in
the great flat giant which kept pace beside him. In front of her in
the little garden the bees droned, a belated butterfly or an early
moth fluttered slowly over the flower-beds, a thousand little creatures
buzzed and hummed, all busy working out their tiny destinies, as she,
too, was working out hers, and each doubtless looking upon their own
as the central point of the universe. A few months for the gnat, a few
years for the girl, but each was happy now in the heavy summer air. A
beetle scuttled out upon the gravel path and bored onwards, its six legs
all working hard, butting up against stones, upsetting itself on ridges,
but still gathering itself up and rushing onwards to some all-important
appointment somewhere in the grass plot. A bat fluttered up from behind
the beech-tree. A breath of night air sighed softly over the hillside
with a little tinge of the chill sea spray in its coolness. Dolly Foster
shivered, and had turned to go in when her mother came out from the
passage.

"Whatever is that Bill doing there?" she cried.

Dolly looked, and saw for the first time that the nameless farm-labourer
was crouching under the beech, his browns and yellows blending with the
bark behind him.

"You go out o' that, Bill!" screamed the farmer's wife.

"What be I to do?" he asked humbly, slouching forward.

"Go, cut chaff in the barn." He nodded and strolled away, a comical
figure in his mud-crusted boots, his strap-tied corduroys and his
almond-coloured skin.

"Well, then, you've taken Elias," said the mother, passing her hand
round her daughter's waist. "I seed him a-kissing your flower. Well, I'm
sorry for Adam, for he is a well-grown young man, a proper young man,
blue ribbon, with money in the Post Office. Still some one must suffer,
else how could we be purified. If the milk's left alone it won't ever
turn into butter. It wants troubling and stirring and churning. That's
what we want, too, before we can turn angels. It's just the same as
butter."

Dolly laughed. "I have not taken Elias yet," said she.

"No? What about Adam then?"

"Nor him either."

"Oh, Dolly girl, can you not take advice from them that is older. I tell
you again that you'll lose them both."

"No, no, mother. Don't you fret yourself. It's all right. But you can
see how hard it is. I like Elias, for he can speak so well, and is so
sure and masterful. And I like Adam bec