Page:The English Peasant.djvu/173

 husband; so, yoked together, they enter the mill, and commence to tread the weary round, hoping for nothing better than permission to tread it to the end of their days. The good man has now to be up every day in the year between three and four o'clock in the morning. At six he comes home to breakfast, and not only must this be ready, but by eight all the work in the house done, for then the wife too must turn out and do her share of outdoor labour.

For in Kent, with its hop-gardens, its cherry-orchards, and its market-grounds, there is always plenty of work for a waggoner's wife all the year round. In the early part of the year there is pole-shaving, pole-butting, and dibbling beans. Then comes couching or weeding, thistle-spudding, hop-tying, and thinning the mangolds. With summer-time comes fruit-packing. Then Kent is seen in its glory. AH the cherry-orchards are full of active, merry groups, some oh ladders, some laden with baskets, all busy and hard at work. Then comes harvesting, followed quickly by the great work of the year, when every one—mother, sisters, brothers, and even the baby—all go out from morning till night into the hop-gardens, and pick as much as their fingers can At last the circling seasons end with duller work—picking up potatoes, couching amongst the sown wheat, and pulling up mangolds and turnips.

Thus a Kentish wife is pretty well occupied, and she only stays away from the field when absolutely obliged to do so. For it is an understood thing that she and her children are to give their labour to the farmer whenever he needs it. Cottages, when they are on the master's land, are sometimes let subject to this arrangement, so that any objection on the part of the woman would lead to the eviction of the family. But they do not object. On the contrary, they seem rather to like it.

"I think," says one, "it is quite right. Women ought to go and do women's work, and help their husbands, and not stay at home. I have taken my daughters out at six years old, hop-tying. When I was eight years old I tied three acres myself. They would give me a dinner every day that I should keep up. I was very quick at it. Now I can't do so much, but I and my daughters tied five acres this year. I go to ladder-tying too."