164 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



" It does one's heart good to look at it now, how- 

 ever/' replied Mr. Greening; "doesn't it make you 

 happy -like to see this sort of change, and feel that 

 you have done it ? it does me." 



" So happy, that at the end of a winter's day of 

 draining-work I have spent hours of delicious idle 

 reverie, with the Lamp wasting beside me as I sat 

 alone, dreaming the day's work over again ; seeing, yet 

 with closed eyes, the long pent-up poison oozing away 

 down its narrow channels, poison no longer ! and 

 thinking of the future showers that will percolate and 

 filter through the loosened soil and subsoil three or 

 four feet deep, like some freed and gladdened thing, 

 doing its bounteous Maker's bidding. I hardly 

 know how to describe the sense of high privilege the 

 thought brings with it of being allowed humbly to 

 aid, as it were, in Nature's glorious development. I 

 know of no pleasure that surpasses it or should sur- 

 pass it except one except one except ONE !" 



" Goodness help us ! why that's three ! And what 

 may it be, after all, that lifts the knocker so many 

 times for one visitor?" 



" Look here, Greening ! do you see that poor fel- 

 low cracking his whip over the horses in that lounging 

 devil-may-care fashion ? It's his first year at plough : 



