FullReads

“The cat!” quoth Keren, waxing as red as any damask rose for very anger; “the little, spiteful cat! But I’ll cut her claws for her! Do thou bide and mark me, father. Ay, I’ll serve her and her Robert in such wise they’ll go to their graves remembering.”

Now, ’twas the very next day that the lads and lasses o’ the village did crown her harvest-queen, and all Bidford was out to see ‘t. And very queen she looked, too, borne aloft in a throne made all o’ dark red roses, and her dark curls crowned with a wreath o’ corn and o’ poppies, that shined in the sunlight like to gold strewn all with rubies. She wore a new kirtle of white wool, and her brown throat rose from her white kerchief like as a frozen wood-dove’s dusky breast doth peep from new-fallen snow.

And Mistress Ruth walked beside her as one o’ her maids o’ honor. And they twain did remind me of naught so much as of a lamb trotting by the side of a forest doe–the one so meek and white, and the other so free and brown, with great eyes ever moving, and head aloft.

There, moreover, walked Master Hacket. He was as brown as my Keren, and nearly half as tall again; and he had eyes like pools o’ water under a night heaven, wherein two stars have drowned themselves, as ’twere, and brows as black and straight as a sweep o’ cloud across an evening sky. Ruth walked at his side, all glittering with her unbound hair, like to a sunbeam that follows a dark stream. And I saw that they talked together, and nodded as though agreeing on something, and looked together at my lass where she sat on her flower-throne with her poppy-crown, and her lips like poppies. And all at once she turned and saw them, and her lips parted over her white teeth in a sudden smile, as when a kirtle o’ red silk doth tear over a white petticoat beneath; and she turned away; but I could see that she laughed in her brown throat, as a bird sings sometimes for its own hearkening ere trolling for the whole forest. So I said to myself, “‘Ware, ‘ware, my little spring lamb; there is trouble ahead for thee. Thou wilt not win thy Boaz so easily as thou dost think, my little Ruth.”

Now, when they were come to the fields, and the maids seated under some elm-trees, and all the lads fallen to ‘t with their sickles, while that they were reaping the glistening corn my Keren doth leap to her feet, and she calls out,

“I know not the name o’ yonder man, but I do know that I can give him a lesson in reaping!”

So forthwith up jumps she, and, striding out into the sunlit meadow, jerks young Hacket’s sickle from his hand, and, having turned back the sleeves o’ her smock, stands well upon her shapely legs and begins to reap.

Now, methought I had ne’er in all my life seen anything more pleasing to look upon. The wind blew down her thick locks about her, so that she was wrapped in a mantle worthy any queen; while with every sweep o’ her strong brown arms the tumbling grain did fall like gold about her, so that she seemed to be trampling upon her treasures after a manner truly royal. Also a red came into her shadowy cheeks, like as though a scarlet flower tossed into a clear brown stream should rise slowly upward beneath the limpid surface and shine a-through. And all at once she ceased, and came back towards the young man, and returned his sickle unto him. And she said, smiling,

“Take thou thy blade, for I have not only reaped the grain, but I have reaped the reward of my bragging as well.” And, behold! when I was come up to them with a drink o’ water in a gourd, there was the blood falling down upon her white kirtle, as though the poppies in her crown had melted in the sunlight and did stain her garment.