“All right!” said Miss Henderson at last, closing her little notebook with a snap, “now I think we’ve been through everything.  I’ll take over one cart, and Mrs. Wellin must remove the other.  I’ll buy the chaff-cutter and the dairy things, but not the reaping machine—­”

“I’m afraid that’ll put Mrs. Wellin out considerably!” threw in Hastings.

“Can’t help it.  I can’t have the place cluttered up with old iron like that.  It’s worth nothing.  I’m sure you wouldn’t advise me to buy it!”

She looked with bright decision at her companion, who smiled a little awkwardly, and said nothing.  The old long habit of considering the Wellin interest first, before any other in the world, held him still, though he was no longer their servant.

Miss Henderson moved back towards the house.

“And you’ll hurry these men up?—­as much as you can?  They are slow-coaches!  I must get in the week after next.  Miss Leighton and I intend to come, whatever happens.”

Hastings understood that “Miss Leighton” was to be Miss Henderson’s partner in the farm, specially to look after the dairy work.  Miss Henderson seemed to think a lot of her.

“And you must please engage those two men you spoke of.  Neither of them, you say, under sixty!  Well, there’s no picking and choosing now.  If they were eighty I should have to take them! till the harvest’s got in.  There are two girls coming from the Land Army, and you’ve clinched that other girl from the village?”

Hastings nodded.

“Well, I dare say we shall get the harvest in somehow,” she said, standing at the gate, and looking over the fields.  “Miss Leighton and I mean to put our backs into it.  But Miss Leighton isn’t as strong as I am.”

Her eyes wandered thoughtfully over the wheat-field, ablaze under the level gold of the sun.  Then she suddenly smiled.

“I expect you think it a queer business, Mr. Hastings, women taking to farming?”

“Well, it’s new, you see, Miss Henderson.”

“I believe it’s going to be very common.  Why shouldn’t the women do it!” She frowned a little.

“Oh, no reason at all,” said Hastings hurriedly, thinking he had offended her.  “I’ve nothing against it myself.  And there won’t be men enough to go round, after the war.”

She looked at him sharply.

“You’ve got a son in the war?”

“Two, and one’s been killed.”

“Last year?”

“No, last month.”

Miss Henderson said nothing, but her look was full of softness.  “He was to have been allowed home directly,” Hastings went on, “for two or three months.  He was head woodman before the war on Lord Radley’s property.”  He pointed to the wooded slopes of the hill.  “And they were to have given him leave to see to the cutting of these woods.”

“These woods!” Miss Henderson turned a startled face upon him.  “You don’t mean to say they’re coming down!”