“Mummy!” she repeated, still whimpering slightly.

“Mummy’s coming,” said Rachel tenderly.  “What a duck it is!”

And bending, she kissed the soft, downy cheek greedily, with the same ardour she had just been throwing into her own dreams of success.

She carried the child, now quiet and comforted, towards the house.  The warm weight upon her arms was delicious to her.  Only as she neared the gate in the now moonlit dusk, her lips quivered suddenly, and two tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I haven’t carried a child,” she thought, “since—­”

Suddenly there was a shout from the farther gate of the harvest field, and a girl came running at top speed.  It was the little one’s elder sister, and with a proper scolding, Rachel gave up her prize.

The two land-girls had finished giving food and water to the cattle and a special mush to new-born calves.  Everything was now in order for the night, and Janet, standing on the steps of the farm-house, rang a bell, which meant that supper would be ready in a few minutes.  The two partners and their employees were soon gathered round the table in the kitchen, which was also the dining-room.  It was a cold meal of bacon, with lettuce, bread and jam, some tea made on a “Tommy’s cooker,” and potatoes which Janet, who was for the present housekeeper and cook, produced hot and steaming from the hay-box to which she had consigned them after the midday dinner.  A small oil-lamp had been lit, and through the open windows afterglow and moonrise streamed in to mingle with its light.  There was a pot of flowers on the table—­purple scabious, and tall cow-parsley, gathered from the orchard, where no one had yet had time to cut the ragged hay beneath the trees.

The scene was typical of a new England.  Women governing—­and women serving—­they were all alike making their way through new paths to new ends.  It was no household in the ordinary sense.  The man was wanting.  The two elder women were bound to the two younger by a purely business tie, which might or might not develop into something more personal.  The two land-lasses had come to supper in their tunics and breeches, while Rachel Henderson and Janet had now both put on the coloured overalls which disguised the masculine garb beneath, and gave them something of the usual feminine air.  Rachel’s overall, indeed, was both pretty and artistic, embroidered a little here and there, and showing a sunburnt throat beneath the rounded chin.

The talk turned on the day’s work, the weather prospects, the vagaries of the cows at milking time, and those horrid little pests the “harvesters,” which haunt the chalk soils.  The two “hands” were clear by now that they liked Miss Leighton the best of the two ladies, they hardly knew why.  Betty Rolfe, the younger of them, who came from Ralstone, was a taking creature, with deep black, or rather violet, eyes, small features framed in curly hair, and the bloom of ripe fruit.  She was naturally full of laughter and talk, and only spoilt by her discoloured and uneven teeth, which showed the usual English neglect of such things in childhood.