Just as the first level neared completion, the machine hit a snag and stopped. The two men proceded to investigate the problem. Matthew stood watching, then all of a sudden found himself sprawling again onto the row of bales. The laughter behind him told clearly enough that the bale that had sent him flying had been intentionally thrown.

“Hey!” he called, turning around. Scrambling to his knees, in one swift movement he leapt forward, threw his arm around Sabina’s ankles, and yanked her feet out from under her. With a cry of laughter she fell onto her back.

Now the fight for supremacy began in earnest, as first one, then the other found themselves knocked, tripped, or shoved off their feet. Laughing so hard they had to struggle for breath, neither could maintain their legs under them long enough to gain control. At last, both Sabina and Matthew stood, facing each other as two wrestlers, circling about, hands poised in readiness.

All at once the wagon lurched forward again into motion. Both toppled over backwards in a heap, giggling like children. A moment later, Hans tossed a bale onto them.

“Hans, you did that on purpose,” laughed Sabina, struggling to climb to her feet.

The old field hand, who had been with the estate for more years than Sabina was old, smiled up at the two with the look of a prankster gradually spreading over his own face. Their playfulness made the work more enjoyable for him, and the rest of the day’s work proceeded at a slower, though hilarious pace.

At day’s end, with the baler off and the tractor proceeding slowly across the field back toward the house, Hans sitting on the edge of the wagon behind it with his legs dangling over the edge, and Matthew and Sabina perched high and triumphant on the topmost bundles of straw, the baron saw the returning workers from the middle of the field of oats. He shut down the combine, climbed down, and walked forward to meet them.

The driver of the tractor stopped. The baron glanced up at his daughter and her young friend, examining Matthew’s brown, dust-smeared face, his puffy eyes made red from the wind-tossed chaff, his sweat-streaked neck, and the shirt and jeans coated from top to bottom with grime and dirt and bits of straw. He smiled and jumped up himself, giving the signal to Friedrick in the tractor to continue on. He climbed up and sat just below his daughter.

“Your father would be proud of you, Matthew,” he said.

“Sabina warned me it would be hard work.”

“You should have seen him, Papa. He’s so strong he threw the bales around like they weighed no more than a feather.”

Matthew laughed.

“Don’t lie to your father, Sabina!” he said. “You handled them more easily than I did!”

Now it was her turn to laugh.

“What do you think of our farming life, Matthew?” asked the baron.