All day, in the heat, they sit
under the bushes picking away. At sundown they carry their heavy
baskets to the weighing-machine on the roadside at the foot of the
hill, and stand in line to be weighed in and paid by the English buyers
for Crosse and Blackwell, Beach, and such houses, who have, I suppose,
some special means of transportation.
That work is, however, the regular work for the women and children.
Getting in the grain is not. Yet if you could see them take hold of it
you would love them. The old men do double work. Amelie's husband is
over seventy. His own work in his fields and orchard would seem too
much for him. Yet he and Amelie and the donkey are in the field by
three o'clock every morning, and by nine o'clock he is marching down the
hill, with his rake and hoe on his shoulder, to help his neighbors.
There is many a woman working in the fields to-day who was not trained
to it. I have a neighbor, a rich peasant, whose two sons are at the
front. Her only daughter married an officer in the Engineer Corps.
When her husband joined his regiment she came home to her mother with
her little boy. I see her every day, in a short skirt and a big hat,
leading her boy by the hand, going to the fields to help her mother.
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