Phoebe made no demur about receiving Will’s little foundling of the hut-circle.  His heart’s desire was usually her amibition also, and though Timothy, as the child had been called, could boast no mother’s love, yet Phoebe proved a kind nurse, and only abated her attention upon the arrival of her own daughter.  Then, as time softened the little mound in Chagford churchyard with young green, so before another baby did the mother’s bereavement soften, sink deeper into memory, revive at longer intervals to conjure tears.  Her character, as has been indicated, admitted of no supreme sustained sorrow.  Suffer she did, and fiery was her agony; but another child brought occupation and new love; while her husband, after the first sentimental outburst of affection over the infant he had found at Metherill, settled into an enduring regard for him, associated him, by some mental process impossible of explanation, with his own lost one, and took an interest, blended of many curious emotions, in the child.

Drying hay soon filled the air with a pleasant savour, and stretched out grey-green ribbons along the emerald of the shorn meadows.  Chown snuffled and sweated and sneezed, for the pollen always gave him hay fever; his master daily worked like a giant from dawn till the owl-light, drank gallons of cider, and performed wonders with the scythe.  A great hay crop gladdened the moormen, and Will, always intoxicated by a little fair fortune, talked much of his husbandry, already calculated the value of the aftermath, and reckoned what number of beasts he might feed next winter.

“‘Most looks as if I’d got a special gift wi’ hay,” he said to his mother on one occasion.  She had let her cottage to holiday folk, and was spending a month on the Moor.

Mrs. Blanchard surveyed the scene from under her sunbonnet and nodded.

“Spare no trouble, no trouble, an’ have it stacked come Saturday.  Theer’ll be thunder an’ gert rains after this heat.  Be the rushes ready for thatchin’ of it?”

“Not yet; but that’s not to say I’ve forgot.”

“I’ll cut some for ‘e myself come the cool of the evenin’.  An’ you can send Ted with the cart to gather ’em up.”

“No, no, mother.  I’ll make time to-morrow.”

“‘Twill be gude to me, an’ like auld days, when I was a li’l maid.  You sharp the sickle an’ fetch the skeiner out, tu, for I was a quick hand at bindin’ ropes o’ rushes, an’ have made many a yard of ’em in my time.”

Then she withdrew from the tremendous sunshine, and Will, now handling a rake, proceeded with his task.

Two days later a rick began to rise majestically at the corner of Blanchard’s largest field, while round about it was gathered the human life of the farm.  Phoebe, with her baby, sat on an old sheepskin rug in the shadow of the growing pile; little Tim rollicked unheeded with Ship in the sweet grass, and clamoured from time to time for milk from a glass bottle; Will stood up aloft and received the hay from Chown’s fork, while Mrs. Blanchard, busy with the “skeiner” stuck into the side of the rick, wound stout ropes of rushes for the thatching.