For some time she was at work indoors, helping to prepare the food for the day, passing in and out of the dim rooms, each of which seemed to have its own quality of shade, and through low doorways with sudden steps, and up and down curving, whitened stairs. In the high, flagged room that had once been the hall, tables were set on trestles for the afternoon feast. The great beam of the old chimney still showed above the hearth, and high in one of the blue-washed walls was a niche where the fiddler would sit to play. Often and often Agnes had seen old Kit perched aloft in the narrow place that had the look of some ancient shrine. The stone passage beside the house had four arches opening on to the yard, and when the sun came they made inky frames for figures moving and standing in blinding light, shears that shone like the swords over Eden’s Gate, snowy fleeces and the pathetic faces of many sheep. The whole courtyard was full, after a while, set like a stage with the clippers on their creels. The sun beat clear upon them as they worked, carving the sheep, as it were, from shreds of the woolly cloud. Only under the south wall and the big horse-chestnuts was there any shade, and here in the sudden gloom the faces looked pale, and the cotton kytles of the men were like moths motionless in an evening dusk. Boys tugged the unwilling sheep from the pens and scuffled with them across the yard, or thrust them, clipped, through the wicket in the arch, to meet the branding-iron outside. They looked awkward and strange as they scuttled away, with the inky letters sharp on their close wool. The lambs came up with innocent eyes and open, wailing mouths. They reached out tentative noses, faintly surprised, and were suddenly satisfied and still. Across the yard was another cool cavern with the yellow slits of open doors yawning in two of its black walls. This was the fleecing-room where the girls were at work, rolling the fleeces and flinging them into the loft. The lock-trimmer sat beside the door, trimming the fleeces as they came in. The soft whiteness of them lay across his knees, and the shears glanced and flashed and made lightnings in the sun.