54 AWAKENING OF ENGLAND. 



picking begins in August. There are the 

 feverish days too of strawberry, currant, plum, 

 and apple picking, days when the whole avail- 

 able female force, big and little, of the entire 

 neighbourhood are earning money for their 

 husbands, fathers, and brothers. 



The usual wages of women, when not paid 

 by piece-work, is Is. 6d. a day. Men are 

 engaged for the plum-picking as a rule, and 

 market gardeners like to get the same skilled 

 hands down from Birmingham, Worcester, or 

 elsewhere every year. One grower told me 

 he had two old men coming regularly every 

 summer for twenty years with their kit, just 

 as though they were sailors signing on to 

 voyage to Evesham year after year. 



Last year, so loaded were the apple-trees, 

 when my own orchard in Surrey was almost 

 bare of fruit, that certain orchards close by the 

 water's edge recalled to me vividly a cider 

 district in Somersetshire "where wind -fallen 

 apples float whole sunny afternoons in lazy 

 pools above mill-dams." These were of the 

 early Victoria variety, which loaded the boughs 

 to breaking-point — a favourite cooking apple at 

 Evesham. Besides the yellow of the Pershore 

 plum, the rich purple of Bells and the scarlet 



