Tom had waited for him all weekend, and Maura had given him stories about college work and scholarships and money that had to be applied for, and he had accepted it all, and he had started the work by himself on Saturday morning, mowing the first few meadows, getting the grass into rows, going through them with the tractor and the old Claas baler. It was a sight, too, to think of that baler as an old one: when Tom had bought it, only ten or twelve years ago, he had been the talk of the country, he knew he had, but now it was a rusting, unreliable heap of a thing, and the last few hours had been spent fixing it up after another ordeal driving around an uneven field. Now, though, he had it ready to go, for another while at least. The hardest fields, the fields that dipped too sharply and went too suddenly into bogland at the edges, he had left for Mark to do; he preferred Mark to do them. Tom himself would go around the meadow with a pitchfork, making sure the rows were even, watching the bales as they came.
