MY YOUNG MAN

By ALEXANDER REID

ALL morning, under a sun small and red as a tomato, the tattie-pickers worked in the long field that ran between the railway and the road. All the fourteen save three, labourers from the farm, were women. Despite the cold they were lightly dressed. Their arms and legs, reddened with cold, were bare, and they worked in silence. In the early morning they had laughed and sung, but the frost that pinched their cheeks and numbed their blue fingers gradually froze up their loquacity.

" Let's make a fire," suggested Liz the Tink suddenly, and gathering an armful of withered stalks ran off with them across the field to the shelter of the hedge.

The others followed more slowly, gathering armfuls of the shaws, and in a few minutes half a dozen fires were crackling in the lea of the hedge. The pickers crouched over them, sitting on their heels and coughing in the pungent smoke. Bridget Malone came to share Liz's fire, bringing an armful of fuel with her. She sat down on the ground hugging her knees in her arms and so near to the fire that a long tongue reached out and singed the short hair on her sturdy calves. " Black rot on them! " said Bridget irritably. " Me mouth's as dry as the wig o' a Dublin lawyer, it is." She pulled her bright blue kerchief from her head and knotted it round her neck, revealing glossy black hair pulled straight back from her forehead. Her eyes, between a low forehead and high cheek bones, were dark blue.

Liz the Tink flung on another armful of fuel.

" Black rot on the life of it! " she echoed. She sighed. " Why wasn't I born a fine lady with a fine gentleman to dance attendance on me : Him saying ' An' can I be fetchin' ye a glass of beer, darlin# or wis it pearls or diamonds that ye wis wantin', me treasure? ' " Laughing, she shook back her mop of flaming hair. She was a tall, massive creature, with clear grey eyes and good- humoured freckled face.

" Maybe me long-lost father will be driving up the road one of these days and stepping high through the tanks cry- ing ' At last, at last, I have found you, me daughter. Step into me car and we'll be home at the ancestral castle in time for tea ! ' " And now it was Bridget's turn to laugh.

" Sure and it's daft that you are. The only car that your father ever saw wis the Black Maria, and him going to jail in it! "

Liz the Tink paid no attention to the interruption. With her head on one side, and gazing dreamily into the smoke, she continued her fantasy, half-mocking, half in earnest.

" Or better," she continued. " How would you like now if while we were all of us sitting here like sheep under the hedge, a fine car should drive up behind us on the road, and a nice handsome young man—a banker maybe, or a lawyer—No! one of these fellows from the films—step out and lean over the hedge. He see's us. . . .

" Yes," breathed Bridget, her eyes shining.

" He sees us and he says ' That's the girl I've been lookin' for! ' And he jumps the hedge and comes up to me and- " Up to you! " interrupted Bridget, indignantly. " And what for would he be coming up to you for, and me sitting here like a flower on the grass! "

Liz was equally indignant.

" Sure and he's my young man that he is! " she re- torted, and then a smile turned down the corners of her mouth.

" Cch, but never you be minding, Bridget," she added, slyly. " I'll not be forgetting you in my-fine house. Maybe I could be taking you along with me as a serving maid to hand round the tea when the gentry are calling." Bridget plumped forward on her knees, and thrust her angry face close to Liz's.

" So that's the way of it," she cried. " So that's the way of it is it? You think ye're better than me do ye! Liz the Tink—born in a hedge! "

" Better a hedge in Argyll than a pig's house in Ireland! " flashed back Liz, bristling.

Both girls got to their feet.

" Is it a pig you're calling me now after stealing me young man? " demanded Bridget, fiercely.

" Your young man! As for calling you a pig. And why should I be insulting a harmless beast that way? "

On the word they were in each other's arms, and struggling wildly, their feet scattering the fire. Bridget caught her foot on a tuft, and they fell heavily, but they continued to struggle, tearing at each other's hair, scratch- ing, using a fist or a boot as the occasion offered.

At the height of the struggle the farmer arrived, driving up in a wagon with the belated meal. He took in the situation at a glance. Such fights were not uncommon.

" Bill—Joe. Separate them," he shouted, jumping down and pushing his way through the pickers.

Grinning, the two farmhands dragged the girls apart, still struggling to get back at one another.

" Now and what's the trouble? " demanded the farmer. He prided himself on his handling of the vagrant pickers.

Liz tossed back her hair from her eyes. She had a scratch down one side of her nose, and a hacked shin, but one of Bridget's eyes, she noted with satisfaction, was already closing.

" She was after stealing my young man," she explained, sullenly.

Bridget's good eye flashed.

" Sure, I did no such thing ! It's the other way that it was."

The farmer scratched his head.

" What man was this? " he asked, patiently.

" The young man that looked over the fence," explained Liz with equal patience.

" It was this way," said Bridget. " He was just looking over the fence when he fell head over heels in love with me. ' That's the girl I've been looking for! ' says he, and was just coming up to me when— " "Ach, but he never even thought of her," burst out Liz, passionately. " I'm telling you it was me he was coming up to!"

The farmer turned to the other pickers.

" You know anything of this? "

They shook their heads. " There's been nobody here," grunted the man who held Bridget.

Liz the Tink opened her eyes wide, then giggled.

" Neither there was! " she said. She giggled again. Bridget shook herself free from her captor's restraining arms, and rubbed her sore eye doubtfully.

" It's right enough," she said, in a puzzled voice. " Th was no one."

The exasperated farmer flung his arms to heaven.

" Then what the blazes were you fighting about! " exploded. " Women! " He stumped back to the wagon. Liz the Tink and Bridget Malone regarded each other critically. The other pickers crowded round the wagon.

Liz put her hands to her hips. " Still," she said, " there had been one its me he would have been jumping 1%2 hedge for! " "Ach, and how could a man as blind as that be jumping a hedge at all," retorted Bridget, scornfully, as she turr...:d away to the wagon.