The Lindsays, Volume II by John K. Leys

The hay-harvest was over, and the corn-harvest had not begun, so there was a comparatively ‘slack time' at the farm. In a month, or less, every man and woman about the place, with probably two or three stray Irish labourers, would be busy with the sickle, or ‘binding,' from early morning till late into the twilight; but for the present there was a period of repose.

Alec was sitting in the parlour with his father and sister. He had been at home, rather against his will, since the beginning of May. He was now a tall, broad-shouldered fellow, strikingly handsome in feature, but rather awkward in limb -- educated, so far as a sufficiency of Latin, Greek, and mathematics was concerned, but entirely ignorant of modern languages and history, and almost as ignorant of the world and human life as he had been when he first went to College. His winters had generally been spent in the society of his friend Cameron (who had at last won the desire of his heart, by being appointed assistant to the Professor of Surgery), and Cameron's influence upon him was stronger than he had any idea of. In heart and in experience Alec was still a boy, and he was, boy like, letting his attention wander from his volume of Spinoza to dream an impossible dream, when he was recalled to the earth by the sound of his father's voice.