Beatifically he smoked, dreamed, watched.
A farm in spring is all birth-young things coming out of bud and shell,
and human beings watching over the process with faint excitement feeding
and tending what has been born. So still the young man sat, that
a mother-goose, with stately cross-footed waddle, brought her six
yellow-necked grey-backed goslings to strop their little beaks against
the grass blades at his feet. Now and again Mrs. Narracombe or the girl
Megan would come and ask if he wanted anything, and he would smile and
say: "Nothing, thanks. It's splendid here." Towards tea-time they came
out together, bearing a long poultice of some dark stuff in a bowl, and
after a long and solemn scrutiny of his swollen knee, bound it on. When
they were gone, he thought of the girl's soft "Oh!"--of her pitying
eyes, and the little wrinkle in her brow. And again he felt that
unreasoning irritation against his departed friend, who had talked such
rot about her. When she brought out his tea, he said:
"How did you like my friend, Megan?"
She forced down her upper lip, as if afraid that to smile was not
polite. "He was a funny gentleman; he made us laugh.
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