TWO:Towards the end of '53, Reuben bought a pedigree bull at Rye market. He knew that he could increase his importance and effectiveness in the neighbourhood if he started as a cattle-breeder, and there was also a sound profit to be made by the animal's hiring fees. The next year he bought ten acres more of Boarzell for grass.
TWO:"If we had no king," said Kirkby, "we should have no tax grinding down the poor. If that tax had not made a beggar of me, Jack Kirkby would not have been here amongst you this night."
TWO:Moreover, she still sometimes had a vague feeling that at the start Harry had not been quite so mad as people thought, that he might perhaps have recovered if she had made him understand that she was true to him, still hoping. No doubt that was all nonsense, but she could not quite smother the idea that she had betrayed Harry. Perhaps it was partly because even before his accident she had cast longing eyes at Reuben. Once again she called up memories of him cutting down willows on his new land, and she acknowledged miserably to herself that in that hour she had already been unfaithful to Harry in her heart, and that all that came afterwards was but the following up of that initial act of treachery. A strong arm, a broad back, a blue shirt in the January twilight ... and Naomi had set out[Pg 105] on a road every step of which was now over rough stones and broken shards.
TWO:Tilly had private affairs of her own which occasionally led her out on Boarzell of an afternoon. She always took her sewing, for she dared not be behindhand with it. Strangely enough, in spite of Jemmy's and Tilly's truancies, the work was somehow got through as usual, for shortcomings would have been found out and punished on the master's returnor worse still, he might have stayed at home. For the first time a certain [Pg 219]freemasonry was established between the brothers and sisters. Hitherto their rebellion had been too secret even for confederacy, but now some of the crushing weight was lifted, and they could combineall except Peter, who was too much Reuben's man for them to trust him; luckily he was rather stupid. So Peter did not see and no one else took any notice if Caro read and wept over sentimental novels, or Jemmy brought home harbour mud on his shoes, or George, who was delicate and epileptic, slept away an hour under a haystack, or Richard pondered the Iliad, or Tilly ran out on the Mooreven though she went to meet Realf of Grandturzel.
