ion behind the shelter of the faggots. In the summer she
works doubly hard in the morning, and gets everything forward, so that she
may go out to the field haymaking in the afternoon, when she may meet her
particular friend, and also, perhaps, his rival.

On Sundays she gladly walks two or more miles across the fields to church,
knowing full well that some one will be lounging about a certain stile, or
lying on the sward by a gate waiting for her. The practice of coquetry is
as delightful in the country lane as in the saloons of wealth, though the
ways in which it exhibits itself may be rude in comparison. So that love
is sometimes the detaining force which keeps the girl in the country. Some
of the young labourers are almost heirs to property in their eyes. One is
perhaps the son of the carrier, who owns a couple of cottages let out to
tenants; or the son of the blacksmith, at whom several caps are set, and
about whom no little jealousy rages. On the whole, servants in the
country, at least at farmhouses, have much more liberty than they could
possibly get in town.

The work is hard in the morning, but generally much less for the rest of
the day; in the evening there is often scarcely anything to do. So that
the farmhouse servant has much time to herself, and is not too strictly
confined indoors when not at work. There is a good deal of 'company,' too;
men coming to the door, men in the rick-yards and cattle-yards, men in the
barn, labourers passing to their work, and so on. It is not so dull a life
as might appear. Indeed, a farmhouse servant probably sees twice as many
of her own class in the course of a week as a servant in town.

Vanity, of course, is not to be shut out even from so simple an existence:
the girl must have a 'fashionable' bonnet, and a pair of thin tight boots,
let the lanes be never so dirty or the fields never so wet. In point of
education they have much improved of late, and most can now read and
write. But when they write home the letter is often read to the mother by
some friend; the girl's parents being nearly or quite illiterate.
Tenant-farmers' wives are often asked to act as notaries in such cases by
cottage women on the receipt of letters from their children.

When such a girl marries in the village she usually finds the work of the
cottage harder than that of the farmhouse. It is more continuous, and when
children arrive the trouble of nursing has to be added to the other
duties, and to