There is such an obviously true ring about the depression with which this announcement of his contentment with his lot is uttered, that even she can no longer doubt of its reality. So he is not happy with his Betty after all! And a very good thing, too! Serve him right! But perhaps the discovery tends to mollify a little the tone of her next observation. 'Are you thinking how badly we want mowing?' she asks, her eyes following the direction of his, which are absently bent upon the sward, to-day not shorn to quite its usual pitch of velvet nicety. 'So we do, indeed. But Jacob has unluckily fallen ill, just as milady lent me the machine, and there it and the pony stand idle, and we'--regretfully eyeing her domain--'are, as you see, like a hay-meadow.' Talbot does not speak for a moment. A great idea is labouring its way to birth in his mind--an idea that may give him a better foothold here than any casually escaped fox or precarious porterage of messages can ever do. 'Why should not I mow?' asks he at last. '_You?_' 'Yes, I; and you lead the pony.' She looks at him, half inclined to be angry. 'Is that a joke?' 'A joke--no! Will you tell me where the pony is? May I harness it?' Again she looks at him, waveringly this time, and thence to her turf. It is already an inch and a half too long; by to-morrow morning it will be three inches, an offence to her neat eye; and when Jacob falls ill he is apt to take his time about it. She yields to temptation. 'I will call the boy.' But the boy is out--_marbleing_, vagranting after his kind about the near village, no doubt. They have to harness the pony themselves; and by the time that they have put the bridle over her head, inserted her feet into her mowing shoes, and led her out of her dark stall into the sunny day, John has almost recovered the ground he had lost since that fortunate hour when, with three drops of his blood, he had bought a square inch of oil-silk and a heavenly smile. They set off. Loudly whirs the machine. Up flies the grass in a little green cloud, which the sun instantly turns into deliciously scented new-mown hay; sedately steps the pony; gravely paces Margaret beside her; honourably John stoops to his toil behind. It is not a pursuit that lends itself much to conversation; but at least he has continuously before his eyes her flat back, her noble shoulders, the milky nape of her neck; and can conjecture as to the length of her unbound hair by counting the number of times that the brown plait winds round the back of her broad head. Every now and then they pause to empty out the grass, and each time a few words pass between them. 'Is Jacob very ill?' 'I am afraid that he suffers a good deal.' 'Is he likely to die?' 'Heaven forbid!' 'Because if he is, I wish you would think of me.' He is half afraid when he has said this; it verges, perhaps, too nearly upon familiarity.