Two Harvesters 
>? 
“Couldn’t wish for a better man,” the son 
assented. 
“He asked if I could keep him going for a 
month or two. ‘ Yes,’ I said, ‘I could find him 
work until Michaelmas at any rate.’ Because, 
he said, he’d got a wife. And sure enough, 
when he come to begin he’d got his wife with 
him—a strong, well-set-up young woman, quite 
respectable-looking ; and we put her on at hay- 
making. She and another woman was all the 
help we had except for him.” 
“And she was as useful as a good many men,” 
interposed the son. 
“Yes. Quiet too. And quite respectable to 
allappearance. Anybody ’d have said they hadn’t 
been married long. ‘The man looked as right 
as she did. And they seemed very comfortable 
and well satisfied. So they ought. He was 
earning five-and-twenty shillings a week; and 
I paid her eighteenpence a day; and let ’em have 
some firewood, and beer, and the use of the 
bedroom in that old cottage.” 
Certainly the windows there were broken out, 
as I had seen, glancing up. In these warm summer 
nights it might have been better to sleep amongst 
the ferns in the dry ditch. Still, as things went, 
the farmer had been generous. He proceeded 
with his talk. 
“ He’d been here a fortnight, and hadn’t drawn 
8I F 
