But those of the other sex were the most interesting of this company

of binders, by reason of the charm which is acquired by woman when

she becomes part and parcel of outdoor nature, and is not merely

an object set down therein as at ordinary times. A field-man is a

personality afield; a field-woman is a portion of the field; she had

somehow lost her own margin, imbibed the essence of her surrounding,

and assimilated herself with it.

The women--or rather girls, for they were mostly young--wore drawn

cotton bonnets with great flapping curtains to keep off the sun, and

gloves to prevent their hands being wounded by the stubble. There

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was one wearing a pale pink jacket, another in a cream-coloured

tight-sleeved gown, another in a petticoat as red as the arms of the

reaping-machine; and others, older, in the brown-rough "wropper"

or over-all--the old-established and most appropriate dress of the

field-woman, which the young ones were abandoning. This morning the

eye returns involuntarily to the girl in the pink cotton jacket, she

being the most flexuous and finely-drawn figure of them all. But

her bonnet is pulled so far over her brow that none of her face is

disclosed while she binds, though her complexion may be guessed from

a stray twine or two of dark brown hair which extends below the

curtain of her bonnet. Perhaps one reason why she seduces casual

attention is that she never courts it, though the other women often

gaze around them. Her binding proceeds with clock-like monotony.

From the sheaf last

finished she draws a handful of ears, patting their tips with her

left palm to bring them even. Then, stooping low, she moves forward,

gathering the corn with both hands against her knees, and pushing

her left gloved hand under the bundle to meet the right on the other

side, holding the corn in an embrace like that of a lover. She

brings the ends of the bond together, and kneels on the sheaf while

she ties it, beating back her skirts now and then when lifted by the

breeze. A bit of her naked arm is visible between the buff leather

of the gauntlet and the sleeve of her gown; and as the day wears on

its feminine smoothness becomes scarified by the stubble and bleeds.

At intervals she stands up to rest, and to retie her disarranged

apron, or to pull her bonnet straight. Then one can see the oval

face of a handsome young woman with deep dark eyes and long heavy

clinging tresses, which seem to clasp in a beseeching way anything

they fall against. The cheeks are paler, the teeth more regular,

the red lips thinner than is usual in a country-bred girl.




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