Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/55

 and fight about it, and shift it to a new place every night, and sleep on it there, and end by not sleeping at all, because of watching each other all night. And it might end by one poisoning—or hoeing—the other. Or they'd turn misers and die in dirt and starvation.

There were no village beauties, nor dancing on the village green in that village. (I wonder if there ever had been in England.) Because there was no green, and an utter absence of girls. They had to go to service before they were old enough. Or to a factory. Girls prefer the factory in England, both in this and "better-class" villages. Because, after factory hours, long as they be, the girl's time is her own. And because English middle class mistresses are seldom human beings where" maids "are concerned, and "keeping up appearances" is a fetish, a religion—very life to them.

The farm hands on Saturday nights sometimes went home three or four arm-in-arm, singing "Comrades—comrades—since the days where we were boys—sharin'—each other's—sorrers—sharin'—each other's joys." Never anything else. They shared their joys on a bank outside the Winders one night, and I complained on the grounds of the sleeping children. I never heard them share each other's joys after that, and have always been remorseful and sorry about it.

The men—as I mentioned before—got from fifteen shillings to twenty shillings per week, and the women from seven shillings to eleven shillings in the season. They paid three shillings for their hutches—deducted from their wages—twopence a pint for their ale, and