Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/54

 were old enough to do so worked in the fields. The woman with the hoe was there, plenty of her—not twenty miles from London—bag aprons and the hoes. There was an old solitary couple I noticed often in the big cabbage field. They lived in one hole in the end of an old hovel, but were clean on Sundays. I've often seen them plod home, bent, in the rain, with sacks tied on and their hoes on their shoulders bags heavy with wet, and hobnailed boots—they both wore them—heavy with clay. End of a "good" week they'd come into the beerhouse for their pints, or half-pints. Their philosophy was—grim—practical they talked—or drivelled, or doted, or cackled, about "them as 'as it," sometimes: not resentfully, discontentedly, enviously, or covetously, but from habit, as other old couples had done before them for generations. She treated him as a rather useless overgrown child with whom she "had no patience," and he defended himself, or rather took it all with grumbling humour or sarcasm—as other old couples have done for generations. It seemed as though they had been only children of old couples right back to the beginning of 'em, and it had ended, or was ending, without a child. In bad weeks they sometimes "wished as they 'ad it"—but you couldn't conceive them as being in earnest about it. If they had "it" suddenly and survived the shock, there would probably be no old couple on earth—or young couple either—who would know less what to do with it. The fear of "they lawyers," and "they banks," and "they thieves" would probably drive them to bury it, and sleep on it,