IOME AT THE HAVEN.





 CHAPTER III.

 HARVESTING.

EDWARD and Lucy had not long been at the Haven
before a little acquaintanceship sprung up between
them and the children of a farmer who lived very near,
and whose farm stretched down to the roadside oppo-
site the Haven, through which, by pleasant pathways
over fields of wheat and barley, they went to the farm-
house. Haymaking time was scarcely over, before
the children began to look forward to the harvest,
when, for the first time in their lives, Edward and
Lucy were to be gleaners. Farmer Whicher always
had a most merry harvest-supper for his labourers;
and this year Mrs. Whicher promised her children also
a little treat in the way of a supper, to which they
were to invite all their young friends, as well as the
children of the farm-labourers who lived in the neigh-
bouring village.
 Now, Edward and Lucy were invited to this har-
vest feast, and looked forward to it with no little
pleasure-watching the weather and the ripening of
the corn almost as anxiously as Farmer Whicher
himself. When the morning came that, on looking
out of the window as she was dressing, Lucy first
described a band of reapers, cutting away with their
bright sickles at the edge of the waving sea of wheat
which lay beyond the roadside hedge, she called out
to Edward the joyful news that the harvest was began;
and, before the day was over, the farmer's children
came down to tell them that their little harvest-home