Harvest! It spread like a golden smile over the land on which we had been working all that summer. All the country about our farm seemed to be tinted in three broad colours—light green of the carried hay-fields, dark green of the late summer woods, blonde-yellow of the corn. And I wish I could show you who read a picture of the biggest cornfield at the Prices' as it looked on a certain memorable day!
This field sloped steeply up to an elm-bordered hedge, and in steeply-sloping rows the sheaves were set up in fives; some still standing to catch every warming ray of sun, others laid down flat, ready for the forking. This laying down of the sheaves was the job given over to Vic, who had been here on the harvest last year; to no mere 'prentice-hand would Mr. Price allow it, for fear of waste.
She made rather a wonderful little picture, the Cockney girl, dark and glowing against the sheaves, laying one down after the other, steadily, carefully, now, so as not to shake and scatter the grain that was to mean England's bread. The movement of Vic's brown arm, lowering that sheaf, reminded me of the gesture with which a woman "eases" her baby's sleeping head down on to a pillow.
"How sweet Vic would have been with a little child," I thought. "What a black shame that the man she should have married was done to death in that German prison camp!"
But Vic nodded gaily at me as I crossed the field, drew the sleeve of her smock across her brown forehead and called, "Getting on fine, aren't we? This is the way we're going to do in those dirty——" Here she made a London street-boy's grimace towards the big, red-painted cart that was coming round by the barn towards the top of the field, driven by one of the German prisoners.
That long cart, which started at the top of the hill, took seven people to work it. An odd seven it was, too—a truly 1918 septette of workers!
Two Germans in the cart, one driving, one settling the sheaves as they came. Two British, the Welsh shepherd Ivor, and the English wounded soldier (substitute) with forks, loading—a strenuous job!
Two Land Girls—Elizabeth and myself—following the cart with the long "heel-ropes" to catch up any loose corn left lying in the stubble. Last, but not least, let me mention the seventh worker—a small but intelligent-looking schoolboy of fourteen, who was giving the last weeks of his holidays from Ellesmere School to helping bring the harvest home. This young Briton walked at the heads of the two enormous horses, leading them, starting them, or calling to them "Wobeck!" in a voice three times as big as himself.
"Yes! A mixed crew, isn't it?" I heard Mr. Price remark to his wife as the pair of them came to have a look at the workers on the carts before they passed on to the barn. "Welsh, English, Germans! All perfectly friendly, too! All of them with just one object, to get in this big harvest as quick as it can be done. They will; you needn't be afraid!"
"If only that horse doesn't get his great hoof on the little boy's foot, now," murmured Mrs. Price, anxiously. "That's all I'm afraid of!"