of whetstones against steel sounded afar on the sleepy summer air.
The familiar music came to Phoebe's ear where she sat at an open kitchen
window of Newtake. Her custom was at times of hay harvest to assist in
the drying of the grass, and few women handled a fork better; but there
had recently reached the farm an infant girl, and the mother had plenty
to do without seeking beyond her cradle.

Phoebe made no demur about receiving Will's little foundling of the
hut-circle. His heart's desire was usually her amibition also, and
though Timothy, as the child had been called, could boast no mother's
love, yet Phoebe proved a kind nurse, and only abated her attention upon
the arrival of her own daughter. Then, as time softened the little mound
in Chagford churchyard with young green, so before another baby did the
mother's bereavement soften, sink deeper into memory, revive at longer
intervals to conjure tears. Her character, as has been indicated,
admitted of no supreme sustained sorrow. Suffer she did, and fiery was
her agony; but another child brought occupation and new love; while her
husband, after the first sentimental outburst of affection over the
infant he had found at Metherill, settled into an enduring regard for
him, associated him, by some mental process impossible of explanation,
with his own lost one, and took an interest, blended of many curious
emotions, in the child.

Drying hay soon filled the air with a pleasant savour, and stretched out
grey-green ribbons along the emerald of the shorn meadows. Chown
snuffled and sweated and sneezed, for the pollen always gave him hay
fever; his master daily worked like a giant from dawn till the
owl-light, drank gallons of cider, and performed wonders with the
scythe. A great hay crop gladdened the moormen, and Will, always
intoxicated by a little fair fortune, talked much of his husbandry,
already calculated the value of the aftermath, and reckoned what number
of beasts he might feed next winter.

"'Most looks as if I'd got a special gift wi' hay," he said to his
mother on one occasion. She had let her cottage to holiday folk, and was
spending a month on the Moor.

Mrs. Blanchard surveyed the scene from under her sunbonnet and nodded.

"Spare no trouble, no trouble, an' have it stacked come Saturday.
Theer'll be thunder an' gert rains after this heat. Be the rushes ready
for thatchin' of it?"

"Not yet; but that's not to say I've forgot."

"I'll cut some for 'e