We returned, panting, sweating, our eyes flashing, to the edge of the standing corn. I heard Lettie calling, and turning round saw Emily and the two children entering the field as they passed from school.
“There’s another!” shouted Leslie.
I saw the oat-tops quiver. “Here! Here!” I yelled. The animal leaped out, and made for the hedge. George and Leslie, who were on that side, dashed off, turned him, and he coursed back our way. I headed him off to the father who swept in pursuit for a short distance, but who was too heavy for the work. The little beast made towards the gate, but this time Mollie, with her hat in her hand and her hair flying, whirled upon him, and she and the little fragile lad sent him back again. The rabbit was getting tired. It dodged the sheaves badly, running towards the top hedge. I went after it. If I could have let myself fall on it I could have caught it, but this was impossible to me, and I merely prevented its dashing through the hole into safety. It raced along the hedge bottom. George tore after it. As he was upon it, it darted into the hedge. He fell flat, and shot his hand into the gap. But it had escaped. He lay there, panting in great sobs, and looking at me with eyes in which excitement and exhaustion struggled like flickering light and darkness. When he could speak, he said, “Why didn’t you fall on top of it?”
“I couldn’t,” said I.
We returned again. The two children were peering into the thick corn also. We thought there was nothing more. George began to mow. As I walked round I caught sight of a rabbit skulking near the bottom corner of the patch. Its ears lay pressed against its back; I could see the palpitation of the heart under the brown fur, and I could see the shining dark eyes looking at me. I felt no pity for it, but still I could not actually hurt it. I beckoned to the father. He ran up, and aimed a blow with the rake. There was a sharp little cry which sent a hot pain through me as if I had been cut. But the rabbit ran out, and instantly I forgot the cry, and gave pursuit, fairly feeling my fingers stiffen to choke it. It was all lame. Leslie was upon it in a moment, and he almost pulled its head off in his excitement to kill it.
I looked up. The girls were at the gate, just turning away. “There are no more,” said the father.
At that instant Mollie shouted.
“There’s one down this hole.”
The hole was too small for George to get his hand in, so we dug it out with the rake-handle. The stick went savagely down the hole, and there came a squeak.
“Mice!” said George, and as he said it the mother slid out. Somebody knocked her on the back, and the hole was opened out. Little mice seemed to swarm everywhere. It was like killing insects. We counted nine little ones lying dead.
“Poor brute,” said George, looking at the mother. “What a job she must have had rearing that lot!” He picked her up, handled her curiously and with pity. Then he said, “Well, I may as well finish this tonight!”
His father took another scythe from off the hedge, and together they soon laid the proud, quivering heads low. Leslie and I tied up as they mowed, and soon all was finished.
The beautiful day was flushing to die. Over in the west the mist was gathering bluer. The intense stillness was broken by the rhythmic hum of the engines at the distant coal-mine, as they drew up the last bantles of men. As we walked across the fields the tubes of stubble tinkled like dulcimers. The scent of the corn began to rise gently. The last cry of the pheasants came from the wood, and the little clouds of birds were gone.
I carried a scythe, and we walked, pleasantly weary, down the hill towards the farm. The children had gone home with the rabbits.
When we reached the mill, we found the girls just rising from the table. Emily began to carry away the used pots, and to set clean ones for us. She merely glanced at us and said her formal greeting. Lettie picked up a book that lay in the ingle seat, and went to the window. George dropped into a chair. He had flung off his coat, and had pushed back his hair. He rested his great brown arms on the table and was silent for a moment.
“Running like that,” he said to me, passing his hand over his eyes, “makes you more tired than a whole day’s work. I don’t think I shall do it again.”
“The sport’s exciting while it lasts,” said Leslie.
“It does you more harm than the rabbits do us good,” said Mrs Saxton.
“Oh, I don’t know, Mother,” drawled her son, “it’s a couple of shillings.”
“And a couple of days off your life.”
“What be that!” he replied, taking a piece of bread and butter, and biting a large piece from it.
“Pour us a drop of tea,” he said to Emily.
“I don’t know that I shall wait on such brutes,” she replied, relenting, and flourishing the teapot.
“Oh,” said he, taking another piece of bread and butter, “I’m not all alone in my savageness this time.”
“Men are all brutes,” said Lettie hotly, without looking up from her book.
“You can tame us,” said Leslie, in mighty good humour. She did not reply. George, began, in that deliberate voice that so annoyed Emily:
“It does make you mad, though, to touch the fur, and not be able to grab him”— he laughed quietly.
Emily moved off in disgust. Lettie opened her mouth sharply to speak, but remained silent.
“I don’t know,” said Leslie. “When it comes to killing it goes against the stomach.”
“If you can run,” said George, “you should be able to run to death. When your blood’s up, you don’t hang half-way.”
“I think a man is horrible,” said Lettie, “who can tear the head off a little mite of a thing like a rabbit, after running it in torture over a field.”
“When he is nothing but a barbarian to begin with —” said Emily.
“If you began to run yourself — you’d be the same,” said George.
“Why, women are cruel enough,” said Leslie, with a glance at Lettie. “Yes,” he continued, “they’re cruel enough in their way”— another look, and a comical little smile.
“Well,” said George, “what’s the good finicking! If you feel like doing a thing — you’d better do it.”
“Unless you haven’t courage,” said Emily, bitingly.
He Hooked up at her with dark eyes, suddenly full of anger.
“But,” said Lettie — she could not hold herself from asking, “Don’t you think it’s brutal, now — now that you do think — isn’t it degrading and mean to run the poor little things down?”
“Perhaps it is,” he replied, “but it wasn’t an hour ago.”
“You have no feeling,” she said bitterly.
He laughed deprecatingly, but said nothing.
We finished tea in silence, Lettie reading, Emily moving about the house. George got up and went out at the end. A moment or two after we heard him across the yard with the milk-buckets, singing “The Ash Grove”.
“He doesn’t care a scrap for anything,” said Emily with accumulated bitterness. Lettie looked out of the window across the yard, thinking. She looked very glum.
After a while we went out also, before the light faded altogether from the pond. Emily took us into the lower garden to get some ripe plums. The old garden was very low. The soil was black. The cornbind and goosegrass were clutching at the ancient gooseberry bushes, which sprawled by the paths. The garden was not very productive, save of weeds, and, perhaps, tremendous lank artichokes or swollen marrows. But at the bottom, where the end of the farm buildings