THREE:"I am afraid not,many thanks to you; John Byles is not thought enough of in this baronyno, it is more likely Holgrave's wife, if she has any children, will have the nursing."He learned to love the moving shadows of clouds[Pg 414] travelling over a sunlit viewto love ridged distances fading from dark bice, through blue, to misty grey. He used to watch for the sparkle of light on far cottage windows, the white sheen of farmhouse walls and the capped turrets of oasts. But he loved best of all to feel the earth under his cheek when he cast himself down, the smell of her teeming sap, the sensation that he lay on a kind breast, generous and faithful. It was strange that the result of all his battles should be this sense of perfect union, this comfort in his loneliness. Reuben was not ashamed at eighty years old to lie full length in some sun-hazed field, and stretch his body over the grass, the better to feel that fertile quietness and moist freshness which is the comfort of those who make the ground their bed.
