Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/78

54 lasses, no less blooming, adorned in their most coquettish attire.

These varlets would come to fetch in the morning, and in a ceremonious manner, the women servants from their former abode, in order to conduct them to the residences of their new masters, and, as the men were not obliged to be at their destination till the evening, they took advantage of the long summer day, to make acquaintance with their future companions in seed-sowing, in field labours, and in harvest.

Often the day-labourers of a parish, the servants of small peasants, borrow a hay-waggon from a large farmer and subscribe for the hire of the horses. All the gangs: thrashers, winnowers, harvestmen, milkmaids, women-haymakers, take their place in the cart, transformed into a perambulating orchard wherein the red puffy faces stand out shining like ruddy apples in the branches.

The fly-net caparisons the cart-horses, for the horse-flies rage all along the oak-drives; but the meshes of the net are hidden under the buttercups, daisies, and roses. Cavalcades are formed. The waggons going to the same villages or returning from the same