Then came the problem of which grass-lands to break up. If only Tom had been there to advise him! He dare not ask his father, in case he should withdraw his first permission. Breaking up grass-land is heresy to an orthodox farmer, and it was quite possible that Mus’ Beatup would change his mind when it came to the crisis. For this reason Harry said no more about it, and planned craftily to start work on one of his father’s “bad days,” when he would not be likely to interfere. Left without counsel, he decided to break up the rest of the Sunk Field, also Forges Field, and an old pasture at the Bucksteep end of the farm. These were wretched soils and would have to be heavily manured; but none of the soils round Worge was really good, and some decent grass must be left for the cows and ewes. Manures were scarce and dear, owing to the war, but Harry thought he could make shift with the farmyard dung, supplemented by a little night-soil, and a ton of waste from the gypsum mines near Robertsbridge. All this cost him more thinking than he had ever done in his life. Once or twice he lay awake from bed-time till dawn, adding up figures, working out ways and means, and making plans for settling any opposition, drunk or sober, from Mus’ Beatup. His responsibility was enormous, but he was at bottom too simple-minded to feel the full weight of it, and his enthusiasm flamed as clear as ever. By crabbed and common means—even the smudgy columns of a provincial newspaper—the vision had come to a country boy’s heart, and found there a divine, undeveloped quality of imagination, and an undisciplined power of enterprise. These two, which had hitherto united to keep him from his work, were now forged together in the heat of the new idea. But for the first he would never have heard the call, and the second alone made it possible that he should obey it. 3 Harry could not help laughing at the faces of Juglery and Elphick when he told them he meant to plough the Sunk Field. “Brëak up grass, Mus’ Harry!” “Surelye! They’re asking farmers all over the country to grow more wheat.” “Does Maaster know as you mean to plough the Sunk?” “Reckon he does. I cud never do it wudout he let me.”