Getting Ready 5 



untidy prairie of old cabbage -stalks, occasionally 

 varied by the ruins of a scarecrow some old hat or 

 bonnet perched on the top of a pole, sloping west- 

 wards to show the prevalence of east winds of late, 

 or a string bedizened with fragments of colourless 

 cloth and ribbon stretched between two crazy sticks. 

 Now these allotments are full of living creatures, 

 all getting something ready. The human beings 

 women, many of them have already cleared away 

 most of the cabbage-stalks ; and now in the sunlight 

 the stretches of freshly-dug earth gleam rich and 

 brown, nay, almost red, where the digging is only 

 just finished. This same earth was in the dead of 

 this damp winter a sodden sticky black crust, beaten 

 hard with rain, and greasy with decaying vegetation ; 

 now it is changed and fresh in colour, smell, and 

 touch. 



Here too the Rooks are very busy so intent 

 upon their work of clearing off grubs and worms 

 from the newly -turned soil that they fear neither 

 human beings, with whom at this time of year they 

 seem to feel a fellowship of labour, nor the obsolete 

 scarecrows which they have long treated with con- 

 tempt. And over the allotments, at a well -main- 

 tained height of seventy or eighty feet, the traffic 

 of these black labourers is continuous and worth 

 watching. From their trees they must pass over 

 the allotments, and then over a little valley and 



