Captures

Having finished his cider, Bowden stood in the kitchen porch looking idly at a dance of gnats. The weather was fine, and the hay was in. It was one of those intervals between harvests which he was wont to take easy, and it would amuse him to think of his neighbour always ‘puzzivantin’’ over some ‘improvement’ or other. But it did not amuse him this evening. That chap was for ever trying to sneak ahead of his neighbours, and had gone and shot his dog! He caught sight of his son Ned, who had just milked the cows and was turning them down the lane. Now the lad would ‘slick himself up’ and go courting that niece of Steer’s. The courtship seemed to Bowden suddenly unnatural. A cough made him conscious of the girl Pansy standing behind him with her sleeves rolled up.