g else in the world, but the street noises drowned everything.
She sank back in her chair and took up the garment she was at work on.
But her mind was busy, and after a few minutes she turned again to her
daughter.

"Thoo'll not be thinkin' o' havin' a day i' t' coontry this month,
Mary?"

"Nay, I'm noan sich a fool as to want to go trapsin' about t' lanes an'
t' ditches. I've my work to attend to, or we'll not get straight wi' t'
rent."

"Aye, we're a bit behind wi' t' rent sin thoo com back frae thy week i'
Blackpool."

"Now don't you be allus talkin' about my week i' Blackpool; I reckon
I've a right to go there, same as t' other lasses that works at
Cohen's."

"I wasn't complainin', Mary."

"Eh! but I know you were; and that's all t' thanks I get for sendin' you
them picture postcards. You want me to bide a widdy all my life, and me
nobbut thirty-five."

"Is there sae mony lads i' Blackpool, that's thinkin' o' gettin' wed?"

"By Gow! there is that. There's a tidy lot o' chaps i' them Blackpool
boarding-houses, an' if a lass minds her business, she'll have hooked
one afore Bank Holiday week's out."

Again there was silence in the workroom, and the needles worked busily.
The daughter was moodily brooding over the matrimonial chances which she
had missed, while the mother's thoughts were going back to her youth and
married life, when she lived at the foot of the Hambledon Hills, in a
cottage where corn-fields, scarlet with poppies in summer-time, reached
to her garden gate. At last the old woman timidly re-opened the
conversation.

"We couldn't tak a hafe-day off next week, I suppose, and gan wi' t'
train soomwheer oot i' t' coontry, wheer I could see a two-three fields
o' corn? Rheumatics is that bad I could hardlins walk far, but mebbe
they'd let me sit on t' platform wheer I could watch t' lads huggin' t'
sheaves or runnin' for t' mell."(1)

"Lor'! mother, fowks don't do daft things like that any longer; they've
too mich sense nowadays."

"Aye, I know t' times has changed, but mebbe there'll be farms still
wheer they keep to t' owd ways. Eh! it were grand to see t' farm-lads
settin' off i' t' race for t' mell-sheaf. Thy gran'father has gotten t'
mell mony a time. I've seen him, when I were a lile lass, bringin' it
back in his airms, and all t' lads kept shoutin' oot:

"Sam Proud's gotten t' mell o' t' farmer's corn,
It's weel bun' an' better shorn;
--Shout 'Mell,' lads, 'Mell'!"

Mary