"Yes, dearie, I know, and it's unaccountable good of you and Naomi to let me come wud you. I döan't think we should ought to mind helping your brother a bit here, when we've all that to look forrard to. But he's a strange lad, and your fäather 'ud turn in his grave to see him." § 4. For the next few months Odiam was in a transitional state. It was gradually being divested of its old comfortable ways, and clad in new garments of endeavour. Gradually the life grew harder, and gradually the tense thought, the knife-edged ambition at the back of all the changes, came forward and asserted themselves openly. Harry and his mother had not realised till then how hard Reuben could be. Hitherto they had never truly known him, for he had hidden in himself his dominant passion. But now it was nakedly displayed, and they began to glimpse his iron and steel through the elusive nebulousness that had veiled them--as one might see the body of a steam-engine emerge through the clouds of draping smoke its activity has flung round it. They could not help wondering at his strenuousness, his unlimited capacity for work, though they failed to understand or sympathise with the object that inspired them. Blackman, grumbling and perplexed, had gone off early in March to the milder energies of Raisins Farm; Becky, for want of a place, had married the drover at Kitchenhour--and it was no empty boast of Reuben's that he would take the greater part of their work on his own shoulders. From half-past four in the morning till nine at night he laboured almost without rest. He drove the cows to pasture, milked them, and stalled them--he followed the plough over the spring-sown crops, he groomed and watered the horses, he fed the fowls, watched the clutches, fattened capons for market--he cleaned the pigsty, and even built a new one in a couple of strenuous days--he bent his back over his spade among the roots, over his barrow, wheeling loads of manure--he was like a man who has been starved and at last finds a square meal before him. He had all the true workman's rewards--the heart-easing ache of tired muscles, the good bath of sweat in the sun's heat, the delicious sprawl, every sinew limp and throbbing, in his bed at nights--and then sleep, dreamless, healing, making new.