While these thoughts were passing Flo went on milking steadily. She was getting used to this job, too; her wrists were getting used to it, so that she could work mechanically. The rhythmical churring sound seemed to encourage easy drifting thought. Resting on the stool, her shoulders and head slightly supported against the cow’s warm side, she could relax in real comfort. On one of her early days, when Bert had told her how he sometimes fell asleep and had been awakened more than once by the bucket slipping, pouring milk into his boots, Flo hadn’t believed him. Now after her late night she knew that to fall asleep would be easy. She looked up at the wall-lamp, which threw its best light in a slightly tremulous circle on the whitewashed baulks immediately over the glass. Lower on the wall the light looked dirty, a yellow stain; this because of the contrast of the true white light coming in through the doorplace. And with the dawn light in came bird songs with a distant clean sweetness. But she was aware of this only as a pleasant background as her thoughts reviewed easily without special purpose the men she had met or seen who might, well . . . who might be possible husbands. There was the boy she had seen on the submarine; where was he? There was Jack Oates, probably off again round the world. Others there were whom she had seen and liked and remembered, though she had never known their names. And so . . . then she noticed that the cow was nearly done and stripping occupied her, for she was determined never to have it put against her that she had spoiled any cattle through not doing that job well.
She went into the four-shippon and began on Polly, the black “hornie”. Now her thoughts went back to the evening, and she wondered again if the man after the eggs were Jack Knight or not; and whether he got home all right. Suppose she married a poacher without knowing that he was a poacher till he came home one night dripping and slimy. Hurriedly she switched off Jack Knight and considered Dick Goldbourn. He at least couldn’t turn out poacher; he had no need to poach. Although she had never thought of them before, she remembered now his clothes: loose-woven greeny tweed, thick and expensive. How nice it would be to marry a man who could dress in good things, and, of course, who would buy whatever you wanted! She thought of her costume hanging behind the curtain under the triangular bedroom shelf, and of how long she had to work yet to pay for it. How exciting and fine when there was someone to buy anything; not just clothes alone, but a home and . . . and everything!
If only Dick had not been crippled, she decided, he would have been just right. He was quiet. He was of the kind she felt that she could trust; not a chancy sort like Clem.