He had seen her lift her
eyes, and waved his hand urbanely to her, while he blew her a kiss.
It meant that their quarrel was over. Tess looked down again, and
carefully abstained from gazing in that direction.
Thus the afternoon dragged on. The wheat-rick shrank lower, and the
straw-rick grew higher, and the corn-sacks were carted away. At six
o'clock the wheat-rick was about shoulder-high from the ground. But
the unthreshed sheaves remaining untouched seemed countless still,
notwithstanding the enormous numbers that had been gulped down by
the insatiable swallower, fed by the man and Tess, through whose two
young hands the greater part of them had passed. And the immense
stack of straw where in the morning there had been nothing, appeared
as the faeces of the same buzzing red glutton. From the west sky
a wrathful shine--all that wild March could afford in the way of
sunset--had burst forth after the cloudy day, flooding the tired and
sticky faces of the threshers, and dyeing them with a coppery light,
as also the flapping garments of the women, which clung to them like
dull flames.
A panting ache ran through the rick. The man who fed was weary, and
Tess could see that the red nape of his neck was encrusted with dirt
and husks.
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