The harvest is now upon us, one of the finest
harvests which England has ever seen. Further volunteers have been called for from the industrial North and Midlands, and north-country voices are heard among our Kentish lanes. Under the Kent threshing-scheme some 400 girls have come down to the soft South. I met two of them yesterday in the wet fields. They were sisters from Mansfield, and they were striding along in their dungarees with sickles in their hands. All day they work, hardening new muscles and waiting for the moment when the great red threshing-machines will start to shake and hum. This is their first knowledge of the land, since hitherto they have worked only in a cotton-cleaning factory, running cotton off from one bobbin on to another, from left to right. Now, when they return aching to their beds, two new movements will weave patterns in their half-sleeping minds—the motion of cutting bonds, the motion of hoisting sheaves.
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