Page:An American Girl in India.djvu/151

 have been flies for all the notice that she took of them. One old hag with a scream of fright dropped the bundle from her head and only escaped the wheel by a miracle, while the tum-tum bumped over the bundle. Fowls and goats innumerable flew in all directions, and all by good luck escaped alive, though if they didn't have glimpses of their past lives flash up before them then they never will. It was the kind of drive one sees in children's picture-books, and I saw again from another point of view John Gilpin's mad career. It was a charming stretch of country through which we passed when I could take my eyes from the fascination of Berengaria's driving to glance around. All up hill and down dale with here and there a level patch, the fields cut out and banked up one above the other tier on tier like seats in some vast amphitheatre, it was a panorama of ever-changing beauty. The reapers were at work amongst the paddy, women as well as men bent double reaping with short sickles, standing often ankle deep in the water and mud of their fields that still remained a grateful legacy of the recent rains. It was just about as unlike an English harvesting as it could be. There was no sign of a hedge anywhere. Only little mounds of earth, grass-grown, a brilliant hue of green, divided the fields, which were so tiny that one could have crossed many of them in a dozen steps. On the higher fields, from which the water had quickly drained, the paddy had been already cut and gathered in. It was only in the hollows where the moisture remained long after the