‘It’s Betsy’s hard work,’ said Marion to herself, as she pushed the wheelbarrow through the rough grass, but she knew it was more than hard work. It was the harmony in which Simon and Betsy lived, and that harmony spread to their healthy self-sufficient children. Marion had found the solace which she had set out to seek that morning.

The way along the edge of the stream was hard going with a wheelbarrow, for it was a little-used path. The marsh, where a stream from the wooded hills sometimes oozed into the main stream was, as Betsy had said, quite dried out, with patches of rushes and thistles standing among the tussocks of grass. There were hard deep hoof prints from the cows, which hurt Marion’s feet. She pushed on, past the steps to the main village bridge, on through the more familiar pasture of the Common, past where her own goat and the half-grown kid were sitting under an alder tree.

A certain envy kept Marion’s thoughts going back again and again to Simon’s family. There were the three girls: Lisa, already married and perhaps pregnant up at Rockwell; Ellen and Kate, already skilled cooks, dairymaids, spinners and gardeners; the boys too, Roger and Gib, strong and capable, being taught partly by showing, partly by exhorting and partly by the long familiarity that went with the grinding of corn and the maintenance of the Mill. It’s not only that they are told what to do, she thought. They see their parents doing it, and carefully. It’s not only that they are told to work hard. They see their parents doing little else.

She compared these children with her own: poor Margery’s twelve years of half-life, half-death; Nolly, the child of such promise, dead at three; the two babies dead almost before they breathed and another smothered by a cat when a few weeks old; Peterkin, maimed for life when he was two, and Alice. She watched Alice, who was tired of being banged about in the wheelbarrow, stumping ahead of her up the slope to their cottage, a stocky cheerful little girl with the belt of her dress trailing behind her. That was all Marion had to show for so many years of ceaseless toil and endurance.

It was very peaceful when she reached home. She took the dock leaves from a reluctant Alice. Some of the honey had melted and run out of the bread. She gave Alice the leaves to lick. She sat down on the log under the eaves, stretched out her tired legs and aching feet into the soft clover, and sighed heavily.

AUGUST

When the sun stoops to meet the western sky

And noons hot hours have wandered weary bye

They seek an awthorn bush or willow tree

Or stouk or shock where coolest shadows be

Where baskets heapd and unbroachd bottles lye

Which dogs in absence watchd with wary eye

To catch their breath awhile and share the boon