PEACH HARVEST.

The "Jubilee" and the "Little Low" run end to end along the sheltered side of the wing facing on to the high-walled tangle of garden, the only patch of flower-garden - and that beleaguered by "frames" and threaded by espaliers - on the whole of the home-stead acres.

If you stand between the two houses, on the little humped pathway leading from the "garden" through to the pigeon-haunted lawn, the scattered vineries, the miscellaneous greenhouses, and the final kitchen garden sprawling over the gentle slope of the low hillside, you can look right and left down long vistas where peaches are hanging, globes of misty rose in a thicket of grey-green leaves; deep-toned in the tempered light pouring through the steamy lichen-grown panes.

It is peach time again, the beginning of harvest for the old brown house on the low hillside. There will be no break now in the garnering until the last bunch of Christmas grapes shall have been cut.

Everyone knows that the good days have set in once more. The sense of the fact fills the house. It clears away the winter's accumulations, cleanses store-rooms and shelves, mends market baskets, sorts piled boxes and packing materials. It presides at every repast, setting a tone, retuning all voices. It gives an

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added tenderness to private griefs and sets its firm stamp on joy.
Strangers and pilgrims will come under its influence. It will draw
them from afar. They will come bringing with them memories of
past summers, eager to add another to their chain. They will have
their part in the festival of gathering. They will feast their
eyes. They will help in the reaping of the hard-won bounties. . . .
But it is not thus, not in any summer's pilgrimage, however charmed
and appreciative, that you may know the full meaning of peach-time
in the old house.

To have that knowledge at its utmost you must have lived
through the months of waiting. You must have shared in the Autumn's
glazing of the long low houses, in the washing of walls and the
painting of stems and branches. You must have swept away the dried
leafage of summer and felt the darkness and the cold settling down
on the old house, have seen it stripping and dimming the garden
and fields. You must have shared the daily care, have kept watch
for enemies, have fought the frosts with high-banked fires. Above
all, you must remember the morning in February when going from the
sober breakfast-table discussion of the day's business and opening
the creaky stubborn door of the Jubilee you saw, away down the
vista, against the sunlit, whitewashed wall, the first star of
blossom gleaming from the side of a firm brown stem.

If you have known all these things, and the further careful
weeks, the fertilising, the swelling of the dull green knobs through

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the swift spring days, every summer's evening will bring you,
woven into its own full sweetness, the sense of the perfect cycle
of the year, the good farm year, redeemed from toil and strain,
visible at last, a gleaming chain of experience, full and complete
at the heart of the immediate moment. . . . Every morning now
brings a going down into the tender, silent brilliance, a skimming
from the abundance of hot-house and garden. There may be days
when you will know how good it is to be the first stirring in the
old house on a morning in peach-time, to be the first to open the
door to the early day. . . . There lie the houses undisturbed -
sleeping, squat and shining in the crystal light pouring from the
far-away vault of the high-hung morning sky. All round you is the
wakening garden. Just beyond, at the foot of the low hill, are
the full meadows and the yellowing wheat-fields. Far off, clear
etched along the low horizon, lie unknown farms and homesteads
calling to your heart, they are so new and fair. You may look for a
while, and then you must take the carrier's flag from its place
behind the two workaday guns propped in the corner just inside the
doorway and make pilgrimage with it "round" the house along the
broad gravel pathway under the larch trees across the dewy "front"
garden, a tiny plot filled with flowering shrubs and rank grass,
to the little gate half hidden in the thickset hedge. The click
of the gate and the sight of you and your banner will bring the
farmyard colony across the way noiselessly scurrying over the

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glistening grass. They will line up for a moment, motionless and expectant, a fringe of brilliant colour along the margin of the meadow. They will watch you as you thrust the bamboo stick into the breast of the hedgerow, dispersing only when you turn back to the creaking garden gate. That duty done, the signal visible from the carrier's cottage three fields away, you may go back into the silent house. If you want to take a look at to-day's peaches before you go to your outdoor gleaning, you can break in at the front door through the little geranium-scented glass porch, along the dim, faintly mouldering passage-way past the closed doors of the silent living-rooms to where the treasure lies stored at the heart of the sleeping house. They were gathered yesterday, tenderly, at the close of the day. No packing-shed or outhouse may harbour them during their hours of waiting. The little "study" must serve them as sanctuary; its dingy cabinets, shell and fossil filled, its case of stuffed marsh-birds on either side of the deep ingle, must make what terms they can with the invaders. As you open the door a faint, warm fragrance meets you, Summer's richest breath moving in the chill mustiness of the little sunless room.

The morning light, filtering through the larch-trees, stretching their delicate fingers towards the slumbering house, pours softly into the quiet room. It lies serenely over the width of table standing below the window and stripped for the season of its wintry drapery.

Ranged upon its homely surface - scrubbed to a dazzling fairness

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- lie the globes of fruit, cheek by cheek, pale-gleaming cheek by cheek. They will colour under the widening stream of day until at last they shine full as the sun left them, clear soft velvet, rose-washed, filmy crimson fading into rosy-green, creamy purple blanching to pale daffodil, and when the eastern meadows are warm with three hours of sunshine and all the house is astir, gentle hands will move amongst them to clasp, unpressing, to choose and shift and range. Swift hands will weave nests for them and line roomy boxes and punnets. Hardly a soul in the household but will have some share in the careful bustle, until at last the fruit lies close-packed, every firm hemisphere showing, unblemished bloom, from its circlet of snowy wool. . . . Nine o'clock brings the quick step of the carrier, hurrying, flag in hand, up the garden path.

A little procession winds its way to the cart. There is a sound of voices in the lane, then the start, the dragging down the hill, the trit-trot of the horses along the level. The peaches are off for another day, travelling swiftly, sure of their market. The one tryst of the farm day has been kept. The hours come quietly to their own again. They pass unwatched. The end of the morning is invisible as yet. One may give oneself up to the high, wide hours. Work and chat will go steadily on. The vegetables are gathered in trugs from the hillside, the flowers from the high-walled garden are cut and bunched, the fruit collected in

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baskets and trays from up and down the sunbaked hot-houses. All
must be carried up across the lawn and stacked about the door
of the potting-shed to be weighed and packed. Towards noon the
market cart is brought out into the stable-yard. There is much
consulting and shifting and contriving to be done before the whole
load is up. The bracing and covering can be done later. The cart
will make its journey this afternoon, or maybe not until to-morrow
early.

The summons to the long, cool room where the mid-day meal is
laid has come more than once. It brings the turn of day. The
afternoon sets in as you cross the threshold; quiet, drowsy work
lies ahead, clearing and tying up, weeding and hosing - slow
dimmed zestless hours when the magic fades from immediate things
and wavers even upon the far horizon. But in the end the moment
comes when you know that a change is there. Life has crept back.
The colour is deepening everywhere. The last hours of the working
day brim and brim until the hush at the heart of being has been
reached once more. It will cherish you during all the hours of
leisure.