noon
A week passed , and there were no tidings of Bathsheba ; nor was there any explanation of her Gilpin 's rig . Then a note came for Maryann , stating that the business which had called her mistress to Bath still detained her there ; but that she hoped to return in the course of another week . Another week passed . The oat-harvest began , and all the men were a-field under a monochromatic Lammas sky , amid the trembling air and short shadows of noon . Indoors nothing was to be heard save the droning of blue-bottle flies ; out-of-doors the whetting of scythes and the hiss of tressy oat-ears rubbing together as their perpendicular stalks of amber-yellow fell heavily to each swath . Every drop of moisture not in the men 's bottles and flagons in the form of cider was raining as perspiration from their foreheads and cheeks . Drought was everywhere else .