to tell his children the story of her love for the unseen bridegroom.  He told it very well.  It seemed to Philip, listening with a smile on his lips, that the old tale fitted in with the scene.  The sky was very blue now, and he thought it could not be more lovely even in Greece.  The children with their fair hair and rosy cheeks, strong, healthy, and vivacious; the delicate form of the hops; the challenging emerald of the leaves, like a blare of trumpets; the magic of the green alley, narrowing to a point as you looked down the row, with the pickers in their sun-bonnets:  perhaps there was more of the Greek spirit there than you could find in the books of professors or in museums.  He was thankful for the beauty of England.  He thought of the winding white roads and the hedgerows, the green meadows with their elm-trees, the delicate line of the hills and the copses that crowned them, the flatness of the marshes, and the melancholy of the North Sea.  He was very glad that he felt its loveliness.  But presently Athelny grew restless and announced that he would go and ask how Robert Kemp’s mother was.  He knew everyone in the garden and called them all by their Christian names; he knew their family histories and all that had happened to them from birth.  With harmless vanity he played the fine gentleman among them, and there was a touch of condescension in his familiarity.  Philip would not go with him.

“I’m going to earn my dinner,” he said.

“Quite right, my boy,” answered Athelny, with a wave of the hand, as he strolled away.  “No work, no dinner.”

CXIX

Philip had not a basket of his own, but sat with Sally.  Jane thought it monstrous that he should help her elder sister rather than herself, and he had to promise to pick for her when Sally’s basket was full.  Sally was almost as quick as her mother.

“Won’t it hurt your hands for sewing?” asked Philip.

“Oh, no, it wants soft hands.  That’s why women pick better than men.  If your hands are hard and your fingers all stiff with a lot of rough work you can’t pick near so well.”

He liked to see her deft movements, and she watched him too now and then with that maternal spirit of hers which was so amusing and yet so charming.  He was clumsy at first, and she laughed at him.  When she bent over and showed him how best to deal with a whole line their hands met.  He was surprised to see her blush.  He could not persuade himself that she was a woman; because he had known her as a flapper, he could not help looking upon her as a child still; yet the number of her admirers showed that she was a child no longer; and though they had only been down a few days one of Sally’s cousins was already so attentive that she had to endure a lot of chaffing.  His name was Peter Gann, and he was the son of Mrs. Athelny’s sister, who had married a farmer near Ferne.  Everyone knew why he found it necessary to walk through the hop-field every day.