‘It would break the knives,’ said the son.

‘But you could cut um with a hook, couldn’t you?’ asked the old man, in a tone that was meant to convey withering contempt of a machine that could only do one thing, and must perforce lie idle ten months of the year.

‘That’s hardly a fair way of looking at it,’ the son ventured.

‘John,’ said his mother, severely, ’I can’t think how you young men can contradict your father.  I’m sure young men never spoke so in my time; and I’m sure your father has been prospered in his farming’ (she felt her silk dress), ’and has done very well without any machines, which cost a deal of money—­and Heaven knows there’s a vast amount going out every day.’

A gruff voice interrupted her—­one of the reapers had advanced along the hedge, with a large earthenware jar in his hand.

‘Measter,’ he shouted to the farmer in the gig, ’can’t you send us out some better tackle than this yer stuff?’

He poured some ale out of the jar on the stubble with an expression of utter disgust.

‘It be the same as I drink myself,’ said the farmer, sharply, and immediately sat down, struck the horse, and drove off.

His son and the labourer—­who could hardly have been distinguished apart so far as their dress went—­stood gazing after him for a few minutes.  They then turned, and each went back to his work without a word.

The farmer drove on steadily homewards at the same jog-trot pace that had been his wont these forty years.  The house stood a considerable distance back from the road:  it was a gabled building of large size, and not without interest.  It was approached by a drive that crossed a green, where some ducks were waddling about, and entered the front garden, which was surrounded by a low wall.  Within was a lawn and an ancient yew tree.  The porch was overgrown with ivy, and the trees that rose behind the grey tiles of the roof set the old house in a frame of foliage.  A fine old English homestead, where any man might be proud to dwell.  But the farmer did not turn up the drive.  He followed the road till he came to a gate leading into the rickyard, and, there getting out of the gig, held the gate open while the horse walked through.  He never used the drive or the front door, but always came in and went out at the back, through the rickyard.

The front garden and lawn were kept in good order, but no one belonging to the house ever frequented it.  Had any stranger driven up to the front door, he might have hammered away with the narrow knocker—­there was no bell—­for half an hour before making any one hear, and then probably it would have been by the accident of the servant going by the passage, and not by dint of noise.  The household lived in the back part of the house.  There was a parlour well furnished, sweet with flowers placed there fresh daily, and with the odour of those in the garden, whose scent came in at the ever open window; but no one sat in it from week’s end to week’s end.  The whole life of the inmates passed in two back rooms—­a sitting-room and kitchen.