There had never been a very deep friendship between them; Bill was inclined to be patronising, and Tom both to resent it and to envy him. But to-day a new, mysterious bond was linking them. In the pocket of Bill’s neat livery there was a paper exactly like that in Tom’s manure-slopped corduroys. “I hear you’ve bin called up, Bill.” “Yes—in a fortnight, they say.” “I’m going too—in a fortnight.” “Pleased?” “No. I’m unaccountable vrothered at leaving the farm. Wot d’you feel about it?” “Oh, me?—I’m not sorry. They’ll keep my place open for me at the Manor, and I shall like getting a hit at Kayser Bill. Besides, the gals think twice as much of you if you’re in uniform.” This was a new complexion on the case, and Tom’s thoughts wandered down to the shop. “I shall like being along of Mus’ Archie, too—he told me I could be along of him. We’re all eighteenth Sussex hereabouts. I reckon you’ll be in with us.” “I dunno.” Tom’s brows were crinkled, for he was thinking hard. He was chewing the fact that for a free man there might be something rather pleasant in soldiering. This happy, conceited, self-confident little chauffeur was teaching him that the soldier’s lot was not entirely dark. “Called up”—“taken”—“fetched along”—those were the words of his conscript’s vocabulary. But now for the first time he saw something beyond them, a voluntary endeavour beyond the conscript’s obedience, a corporate enthusiasm beyond his lonely unwillingness. “We’re all eighteenth Sussex hereabouts....” 8 April was May before Tom’s weeks of grace had run. The field hollows were white with drifts of hawthorn, and the pale purplish haze of the cuckoo-flower had given place to the buttercups’ dabble of gold. The papery-white of the wild cherry had gone from the woods, which were green now, thick, and full of the nutty smell of leaves. The ditches were milky with fennel, and on the high meadows by Thunders Hill the broom and the gorse clumped their yellows together, making the hill a flaming cone to those who saw it from the marshes of Horse Eye. The farmers of Dallington watched their hayfields rust. There was little corn in that country bounded by the Four Roads, so as the sun climbed higher noon by noon, the neighbourhood grew gipsy-brown—the straw-coloured feathers of the grass veiled a glowing heart of clover, and above them opened the white ox-eyes and pools of sorrel.... Tom Beatup watched ripen the fields whose harvest he would not see. There were some twenty acres of hay at Worge, and two fields in which the green corn was his hope and dread. The crop was promising on the whole—a bit sedge-leaved perhaps, but firm in its seed. There were the hops, too, in the low fields by Puddledock, where Forges Wood shut off the north-east wind. He trundled the insect-sprayer round the bines, and afterwards loved the smell of his green, sticky hands.