her hands still holding it at either side as children stand and dodge
when they are playing hide-and-seek. He shot out a hand to her, but she
evaded it and was off to where more bundles lay upon the stubble, and
not for some time did he get another chance to speak to her. Without a
word said they tacitly agreed to play this game of only meeting, hands
and eyes, now and again as though by chance, she sheltering behind the
oats, feeling his passion of worship, even so, as much as she could face
under watching eyes. Like children they played at this game which had
grown up without a word, both recognising it, and both the happier for
the frail barriers and the secret exchanged by stealth before the
others. At lunch, eaten on the grassy slope of the next field, he did
not even sit next her, but both had to watch over themselves that they
did not yield too often to the temptation of a glance that would have
told as much to an onlooker as to each other.

The afternoon somehow lacked the first ecstasy of the morning, the
labour suddenly became harder to unaccustomed muscles, and the girls lay
in the shadows of the stooks and idled. They had time to talk among
themselves while Ishmael and John-James worked on at the far end of the
field. Blanche thought it rather silly and tiresome of Ishmael to keep
on at it; surely he could leave that clumsy brother of his--for the
first time the realisation that John-James actually was whole brother to
Ishmael flashed into her mind--and wander away somewhere with her! What
was the good of being the owner and master if he could not get some one
else to do the work when it became a bore? So Blanche inwardly; and
Ishmael, to whom it would never have occurred to begin work on a field
and leave it half-done, went on steadily--stooping, gathering, binding;
she could see the perpetual crouch of his figure, hardly ever
straightening itself, down there against a background of green hedge and
sullen grey sea.