SHEAVES


The following day dawned still and hot as ever, but overcast with a grey
film, though the pale sky held a glaring quality that reflected on to
the eyeballs. Down in the lowest meadow the oats had not yet been
gathered into sheaves, and John-James, gazing at the sky, was of opinion
that the sooner it was done the better. Ishmael agreed without
enthusiasm, till it occurred to him that Blanche, who was so charmed
with a farmer's life, would probably enjoy helping. It might be made
into a sort of picnic, a _fête champêtre_; the beautiful monkey could
help, and he could send a boy over to the mill to fetch Phoebe. They
would make a day of it--the kind of pastoral occasion which cannot
exactly be called artificial and yet which does not in the least
represent the actual life of those who live by land.

Vassie was enthusiastic about the idea, and soon the house was in a
ferment with preparations; bottles of cider were brought out, a stone
puncheon of beer produced for the men, cakes and pasties began to form
beneath Vassie's willing hands. Ishmael felt a pang as he watched her.
How could it affect her but adversely, this change he was to make? He
felt that Blanche would not want any of his family, even Vassie, living
in the house with them, and it was her right to order such a matter as
she would. To settle anywhere with her mother was impossible for the
proud fastidious Vassie, and, though he could allow her enough money to
make her independent, she could hardly, in the ideas of those days, go
alone into the world upon it.

There would be terrible scenes with his mother, he realised, before she