Then a note came for Maryann, stating that the
business which had called her mistress to Bath still
detained her there; but that she hoped to return
in the course of another week.
Another week passed. The oat-harvest began, and
all the men were a-field under a monochromatic Lammas
sky, amid the trembling air and short shadows of noon.
Indoors nothing was to be heard save the droning of
blue-bottle flies; out-of-doors the whetting of scythes
and the hiss of tressy oat-ears rubbing together as their
perpendicular stalks of amber-yellow fell heavily to each
swath. Every drop of moisture not in the men's bottles
and flagons in the form of cider was raining as perspira-
tion from their foreheads and cheeks. Drought was
everywhere else.
They were about to withdraw for a while into the
charitable shade of a tree in the fence, when Coggan
saw a figure in a blue coat and brass buttons running
to them across the field.
"I wonder who that is?" he said.
"I hope nothing is wrong about mistress." said
Maryann, who with some other women was tying the
bundles (oats being always sheafed on this farm), "but
an unlucky token came to me indoors this morning.
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