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diminished and finally conjured away by liberal drinking. Then he would appear relaxed and lazy,and would in truth be so; but those who knew him best knew that beneath the new easiness was the same quick combustible energy, ready to flare up into brief anger or a sudden sullen resumption of work. Except for Emily his wife, no one was more surely aware of these things than Matthew, who had enough of both parents in him to enjoy an intuitive understanding of Joe’s impetuous humours, as of Emily’s mildness, though outwardly and in general disposition he ‘favoured his mother’, as the saying went.
    â€˜So that’s where y’ are, hey?’
    Joe stood in the doorway of the cowshed where Matthew was busy on the late milking. He stood firmly planted, feet well apart, hands on hips: a sturdy stocky figure. Under black eyebrows, which nearly met above the broad nose, his eyes were glinting bright.
    Balanced on the milking stool, his head pressing against Blossom’s velvet flank, Matthew glanced up at his father and back again at once to the business in hand. The resonant spurt of the milk into the pail was all he had ears for at the moment. He was a little behind time.
    â€˜Ah,’ said Matthew. It was a simple affirmative.
    â€˜She the last one, boy?’
    Talkative mood this evening, what’s biting him?—he can see for himself she’s the last.
    â€˜Ah,’ said Matthew again.
    â€˜When you’ve finished and cleaned up a bit,’ said Joe, ‘we’ll be getting along out. Hey?’
    â€˜Blackie didn’t give much tonight,’ said Matthew. ‘Seems sulky.’
    â€˜Still fretting for her calf,’ said Joe. ‘She’ll get over it.’
    Very different in figure and feature as they were, for Matthew was already a shade taller as well as less broad than his father, and his habitual expression placid and thoughtful rather than alert, there was beginning to be a hint of likeness between them, a likeness the more amusing because it was based not in nature but in an unconscious imitation. Since his translationfrom schoolboy to farmhand Matthew had begun to cultivate, unknowingly, a curtness of phrase, a grown-up casual manner, which sat oddly on a boy who was in fact all eagerness and admiration. Yet, if the apparent casualness belied his enthusiasm, the leisurely approach that went with it reflected truly enough a deep-seated unhurrying acceptance of life as it came.
    And now the sense of his father’s earlier remark had penetrated Matthew’s preoccupations.
    â€˜Going out, did you say, Dad? Where to?’
    â€˜On the spree, boy. You and me. What d’ ye say?’
    Immensely flattered, Matthew said again, with a shy grin but with eyes only for his work: ‘Where to? Cutting clover?’ An idle question, this last: he knew Joe would never consent to start on such a job so late in the day. ‘But, I say—isn’t it Lutterthorpe for you to-night, dad?’
    â€˜That’s the size of it,’ said Joe. ‘We’re playing a match tonight, boy. Losers pay for the beer.’
    Matthew was now in possession of the whole story. It was a proud and unprecedented moment: for the first time, and in consonance with his new dignity, he was to be taken to the bowling club at Lutterthorpe and introduced to his father’s cronies and acquaintances. All he needed to complete his satisfaction was to hear Joe say that they could cut the clover tomorrow, since the weather looked like holding; but Joe said no such thing; he stamped his way back into the house saying he’d go fetch his ‘woods’ while Matthew was getting the trap out. Too well trained by his father to let himself be hurried in such a matter as milking, Matthew drained the last drop from the now slack udder before carrying his last bucketful to the diary, where Nancy was waiting to run it through the separator. Then he must wash himself, and change