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‘Shot my dog!’ thought Bowden; ‘shot my dog! Yu wait a bit!’

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The girl Pansy turned the handle of the separator, and its whining drone mixed with the thoughts and feelings, poignant yet formless, of one who had little say in her own career. There was an ache in her loins, for hay harvest was ever a hard week; and an ache in her heart, because she had no leisure, like Molly Winch and other girls, who could find time for the piano and to make their dresses. She touched her hard frieze skirt. She was sick of the ugly thing. And she hastened the separator. She had to feed the calves and set the supper before she could change into her Sunday frock and go to evening church—her one weekly festivity. Ned Bowden! Her fancy soared to the monstrous extravagance of herself and Ned walking across the fields to church together, singing out of one hymn-book; Ned who had given her a look when he passed just now as if he realised at last that she had been thinking of him for weeks. A dusky flush crept up in her pale cheeks. A girl must think of somebody—she wasn’t old Mother Bowden, with her hands on her lap all day, in sunlight or fire-shine, content just to be warm! And she turned the handle with a sort of frenzy. Would the milk never finish running through? Ned never saw her in her frock—her frock sprigged with cornflowers; he went off too early to his courting, Sunday evenings. In this old skirt she looked so thick and muddy. And her arms—— Gazing despairingly at arms browned and roughened her fancy took another monstrous flight. She saw herself and Molly Winch side by side ungarbed. Ah! She would make two of that Molly Winch! The thought at once pained and pleased her. It was genteel to be thin and elegant; and yet—instinct told her—strength and firmness of flesh had been desirable before ever gentility existed. She let the handle go, and, lifting the pail of ‘waste,’ hurried down with it to the dark byre, whence the young calves were thrusting their red muzzles. She pushed them back in turn—greedy little things—smacking their wet noses, scolding them. Ugh! How mucky it was in there—they ought to give that byre a good clean up! Banging down the empty pail, she ran to set out supper on the long deal table. In the last of the sunlight old Mother Bowden’s bright eyes seemed to watch her inhumanly. She would never be done in time—never be done in time!