She stopped short when she saw us, then went on with the kind smile of
welcome which never failed us. "Thank you for coming to see us,
neighbours; but I am sure that you won't think me unkind if I go on with
my work, especially when I tell you that I was ill and unable to do
anything all through April and May; and this open-air and the sun and the
work together, and my feeling well again too, make a mere delight of
every hour to me; and excuse me, I must go on."

She fell to work accordingly on a carving in low relief of flowers and
figures, but talked on amidst her mallet strokes: "You see, we all think
this the prettiest place for a house up and down these reaches; and the
site has been so long encumbered with an unworthy one, that we masons
were determined to pay off fate and destiny for once, and build the
prettiest house we could compass here--and so--and so--"

Here she lapsed into mere carving, but the tall foreman came up and said:
"Yes, neighbours, that is it: so it is going to be all ashlar because we
want to carve a kind of a wreath of flowers and figures all round it; and
we have been much hindered by one thing or other--Philippa's illness
amongst others,--and though we could have managed our wreath without
her--"

"Could you, though?" grumbled the last-named from the face of the wall.

"Well, at any rate, she is our best carver, and it would not have been
kind to begin the carving without her. So you see," said he, looking at
Dick and me, "we really couldn't go haymaking, could we, neighbours? But
you see, we are getting on so fast now with this splendid weather, that I
think we may well spare a week or ten days at wheat-harvest; and won't we
go at that work then! Come down then to the acres that lie north and by
west here at our backs and you shall see good harvesters, neighbours.

"Hurrah, for a good brag!" called a voice from the scaffold above us;
"our foreman thinks that an easier job than putting one stone on
another!"

There was a general laugh at this sally, in which the tall foreman
joined; and with that we saw a lad bringing out a little table into the
shadow of the stone-shed, which he set down there, and then going back,
came out again with the inevitable big wickered flask and tall glasses,
whereon the foreman led us up to due seats on blocks of stone, and said:

"Well, neighbours, drink to my brag coming true, or I shall think you
don't believe me! Up there!" said he, hailing the