The following day dawned still and hot as ever, but overcast with a grey film, though the pale sky held a glaring quality that reflected on to the eyeballs.  Down in the lowest meadow the oats had not yet been gathered into sheaves, and John-James, gazing at the sky, was of opinion that the sooner it was done the better.  Ishmael agreed without enthusiasm, till it occurred to him that Blanche, who was so charmed with a farmer’s life, would probably enjoy helping.  It might be made into a sort of picnic, a fete champetre; the beautiful monkey could help, and he could send a boy over to the mill to fetch Phoebe.  They would make a day of it—­the kind of pastoral occasion which cannot exactly be called artificial and yet which does not in the least represent the actual life of those who live by land.

Vassie was enthusiastic about the idea, and soon the house was in a ferment with preparations; bottles of cider were brought out, a stone puncheon of beer produced for the men, cakes and pasties began to form beneath Vassie’s willing hands.  Ishmael felt a pang as he watched her.  How could it affect her but adversely, this change he was to make?  He felt that Blanche would not want any of his family, even Vassie, living in the house with them, and it was her right to order such a matter as she would.  To settle anywhere with her mother was impossible for the proud fastidious Vassie, and, though he could allow her enough money to make her independent, she could hardly, in the ideas of those days, go alone into the world upon it.

There would be terrible scenes with his mother, he realised, before she would consent to go, but he shook the thought of it all off him on this the first morning of his plighted faith with Blanche.  It would be unpleasant, but imperative, and how well worth it!...  Meanwhile, there was love to be enjoyed, every moment of it—­love that was still to him such a shy and delicate thing that he hardly dared to breathe upon it for fear of ruffling in some clumsy way Blanche’s fine susceptibilities.  She must have had so much to suffer from undue approaches in her battle with the world; not from him should such tarnishing come.

He sent a note down to her at Mrs. Penticost’s to tell her again, in his morning greeting, of his love and to advise her of the mock-business of the day.  Blanche was still in bed when it arrived, and Judith, looking more like a handsome monkey than ever in a faded red Garibaldi, took it in to her.

Judith still admired Blanche above all women, although she saw her as now with a creamed face and hair that resembled a row of little slugs disposed about her brow.  Blanche rose above all this as she managed to rise above an inauspicious background, and the lazy stretch she gave beneath the sheet that was all that covered her, bringing out two white arms above her head so that the muscles swelled under the tight skin, was so lovely in its feline grace as to triumph over anything else.