Robert Backfield was a member of Peasmarsh choir. He had a good, ringing bass voice, which had attracted the clerk's notice, and though Reuben disapproved of his son's having any interests outside Odiam, he realised that as a good Tory he ought to support the Churchespecially as the hours of the practices did not clash with Robert's more important engagements."Where's master?"
They accordingly withdrew from the chamber, and, in the court-yard, were joined by Holgrave. "Did the baroness take the gloves?" he asked.He started licking his forty acres into shape, with many inward vows that he would have the rest of them soon, he was hemmed if he didn't. He was on the high ground now, he could throw a stone into the clump of firs which still mocked his endeavours. The soil was all hard and flinty, matted with heather roots and the fibres of gorse. Reuben's men grumbled and cursed as the earth crumbled and rattled against their spades, which sometimes broke on the big flints and bits of limestone. They scoffed incredulously when old Beatup told them that the lower pastures and the Totease oatfields had once been like this."Look here, farmer," said one of the young men"we're awfully sorry, and we'll settle with you about that cow. We were only having a rag. We're awfully sorry.""Quite so," said Albert, who seemed to have learned sarcasm in exile"h?morrhage is so deuced easy to sham."
