mmediately below was the grey church of Danecross, the rectory,
the school-house, and a group of cottages all nestling sociably
together; farther on, Orchards Farm peeped out from amongst the trees,
which were still white with blossom, and above all this came the cold
serious outline of the chalk hills, broken here and there by the beech
woods. Peter never felt so happy as when he was looking at this from
the High Field, with his dinner in his pocket and the prospect of a long
day's work before him. It was so far away from all that disturbed and
worried; no one to scold, no one to call him clumsy, no one to look
angrily at him, no sounds of dispute. Only the voice of the wind, which
blew so freshly up here and seemed to cheer him on, and the song of the
larks high above his head, and for companions his good beasts with no
reproof in their patient eyes, but only obedience and kindness. Peter
was master in the High Field. No one could do a better day's work or
drive a straighter furrow, and he was proud of it, and proud of his
team--three iron-greys, with white manes and tails, called "Pleasant",
"Old Pleasant", and "Young Pleasant." Yet though he did his ploughing
well, it by no means occupied all his mind. As he trudged backwards and
forwards with bent head, and hands grasping the handles, with now and
then a shout to his horses, and now and then a pause for rest, his
thoughts were free as the wind, flying about to an sorts of subjects.
For this silent Peter had always something to wonder about. He never
asked questions now as he had done at school: he had been laughed at so
much then, that he knew well enough by this time that he only wondered
so much because he was more stupid than other folks; it must be so, for
the most common things which he saw every day, and which wise people
took as a matter of course, were enough to puzzle him and fill his mind
with wonder. The stars, the flowers, the sunset, the sound of the wind,
the very pebbles turned up by the ploughshare, gave him strange feelings
which he did not understand and which he carefully hid. They would have
been explained, he knew, if he had expressed them, by the sentence,
"Peter's not all there"; and he was sometimes quite inclined to think
that this was really the case. To-day his thoughts had been fixed on
the approaching holiday, and on all the delights of the past one. It
was to him a most beautiful and even solemn occasion, and he could
recall