The house front stretches along a sloping grass plot, the immense porch

built out like a wing with one ball-topped gable above it, a smaller

gable in the roof behind. On either side two rows of wide black windows,

heavy browed, with thick stone mullions.

Barker, Jerrold Fielding's agent, used to live there; but before the

spring of nineteen sixteen Barker had joined up, Wyck Manor had been

turned into a home for convalescent soldiers, and Anne was living with

Colin at the Manor Farm.

Half of her Ilford land had been taken by the government; and she had

let the rest together with the house and orchard. Instead of her own

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estate she had the Manor to look after now. It had been impossible in

war-time to fill Barker's place, and Anne had become Jerrold's agent.

She had begun with a vague promise to give a look round now and then;

but when the spring came she found herself doing Barker's work, keeping

the farm accounts, ordering fertilizers, calculating so many

hundredweights of superphosphate of lime, or sulphate of ammonia, or

muriate of potash to the acre; riding about on Barker's horse, looking

after the ploughing; plodding through the furrows of the hill slopes to

see how the new drillers were working; going the round of the sheep-pens

to keep count of the sick ewes and lambs; carrying the motherless lambs

in her arms from the fold to the warm kitchen.

She went through February rain and snow, through March wind and sleet,

and through the mists of the low meadows; her feet were loaded with

earth from the ploughed fields; her nostrils filled with the cold, rich

smell of the wet earth; the rank, sharp smell of swedes, the dry,

pungent smell of straw and hay; the thick, oily, woolly smell of the

folds, the warm, half-sweet, half sour smell of the cattle sheds, of

champed fodder, of milky cow's breath; the smell of hot litter and dung.

At five and twenty she had reached the last clear decision of her

beauty. Dressed in riding coat and breeches, her body showed more

slender and more robust than ever. Rain, sun and wind were cosmetics to

her firm, smooth skin. Her eyes were bright dark, washed with the clean

air.

On her Essex farm and afterwards at the War she had learned how to

handle men. Sulky Curtis, who grumbled under Barker's rule, surrendered

to Anne without a scowl. When Anne came riding over the Seven Acre

field, lazy Ballinger pulled himself together and ploughed through the

two last furrows that he would have left for next day in Barker's time.

Even for Ballinger and Curtis she had smiles that atoned for her little

air of imperious command.

And Colin followed her about the farmyard and up the fields till he

tired and turned back. She would see him standing by the gate she had

passed through, looking after her with the mournful look he used to have

when he was a little boy and they left him behind.




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