The midday sun
The woods are all one dark monotonous green ; the waggon-loads of hay no longer creep along the lanes , scattering their sweet-smelling fragments on the blackberry branches ; the pastures are often a little tanned , yet the corn has not got its last splendour of red and gold ; the lambs and calves have lost all traces of their innocent frisky prettiness , and have become stupid young sheep and cows . But it is a time of leisure on the farm -- that pause between hay-and corn-harvest , and so the farmers and labourers in Hayslope and Broxton thought the captain did well to come of age just then , when they could give their undivided minds to the flavour of the great cask of ale which had been brewed the autumn after `` the heir '' was born , and was to be tapped on his twenty-first birthday . The air had been merry with the ringing of church-bells very early this morning , and every one had made haste to get through the needful work before twelve , when it would be time to think of getting ready to go to the Chase . The midday sun was streaming into Hetty 's bedchamber , and there was no blind to temper the heat with which it fell on her head as she looked at herself in the old specked glass . Still , that was the only glass she had in which she could see her neck and arms , for the small hanging glass she had fetched out of the next room -- the room that had been Dinah 's -- would show her nothing below her little chin ; and that beautiful bit of neck where the roundness of her cheek melted into another roundness shadowed by dark delicate curls . And to-day she thought more than usual about her neck and arms ; for at the dance this evening she was not to wear any neckerchief , and she had been busy yesterday with her spotted pink-and-white frock , that she might make the sleeves either long or short at will . She was dressed now just as she was to be in the evening , with a tucker made of `` real '' lace , which her aunt had lent her for this unparalleled occasion , but with no ornaments besides ; she had even taken out her small round ear-rings which she wore every day .