82 NATURE NEAR LONDON. 



together calling occasionally for a *' halter,'* and 

 beyond them the green, glossy neck of a drake 

 glistens in the sunshine. 



When the corn is high, and sometimes before it is 

 well up, the doors of the barn are daily open, and 

 shock-headed children peer over the hatch. There 

 are others within playing and tumbling on a heap of 

 straw — always straw — which is their bed at night. 

 The sacks which form their counterpane are rolled 

 aside, and they have half the barn for their nursery. 

 If it is wet, at least one great girl and the mother 

 will be there too, gravely sewing, and sitting where 

 they can see all that goes along the road. 



A hundred yards away, in a corner of an arable 

 field, the very windiest and most draughty that could 

 be chosen, where the hedge is cut down so that it 

 can barely be called a hedge, and where the elms 

 draw the wind, the men of the family crowd over a 

 smoky fire. In the wind and rain the fire could not 

 burn at all had they not by means of a stick propped 

 up a hurdle to windward, and thus sheltered it. As 

 it is there seems no flame, only white embers and a 

 flow of smoke, into which the men from time to time 

 cast the dead wood they have gathered. Here the 

 pot is boiled and the cooking accomplished at a safe 

 distance from the litter and straw of the rickyard. 



These people are Irish, who come year after year 

 to the same barn for the hoeing and the harvest, 

 travelHng from the distant West to gather agricultural 

 wages on the verge of the metropolis. 



In fine summer weather, beside the usual business 

 trafiic, there goes past this windy bare corner a 



