noon
Sometimes he turned aside to examine tottering gates and blocked ditches , and commented to Foster upon the economics of farming and the burden of taxes . The latter soon gathered that there was not much profit to be derived from a small moorland estate and his host was far from rich . It looked as if it had cost him , and perhaps his family , some self-denial to send the money that had once or twice enabled Lawrence , and Foster with him , to weather a crisis . At noon they were given a better lunch than Foster had often been satisfied with at a lonely farm , where Featherstone spoke of him as his son 's partner , and seemed to take an ingenuous pride in making it known that Lawrence was prospering . This gave Foster a hint that he acted on later . They , however , shot a brace of partridges in a turnip field , a widgeon that rose from a reedy tarn , and a woodcock that sprang out of a holly thicket in a bog . It was a day of gleams of sunlight , passing showers , and mist that rolled about the hills and swept away , leaving the long slopes in transient brightness , checkered with the green of mosses and the red of withered fern .