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 Books 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 



