the ungainliness of men's attire emphasises the butterfly nature
of girls--their look, their voices, the little graces they
half-consciously and half-unknowingly display with each other, show
each off to better advantage than at any other time. Vassie, Phoebe,
Judith, and Blanche made the rough field a flower-garden that day to eye
and ear, almost to nostril, for their presence was so quickening that
the sweet smell of the oats and the green things cut with it seemed to
emanate from the girls and be part of their presence. Laughter and the
swish of skirts mingled with the rustle of stalk and grain, the sway and
the dip of skirts mingled with the bending of the sheaves. To Ishmael
his lover seemed the sweeter thus absorbed as one of others than even
alone. All that month he had been seeing her only, to such an extent
that her relationship with the rest of the world down at Cloom had not
held his attention. Now he realised how vital the state of those
relationships was, and seeing her one of a beautiful scheme that seemed
inevitable and lasting as a Greek frieze, he took that purely physical
circumstance to mean mental harmony as well.

It was hard work, though sweet, among the oats, and the physical
exertion satisfied everyone, so that no fringe was left beyond it for
thought. When they first entered the field the crop lay in broad tawny
bands across the greener stubble, just as it had fallen from the
scythes. The amateur harvesters had to gather the oats into great
bundles and, binding them, stack the sheaves thus made together, against
the day, close at hand now, when they would be carried to the threshing.

Bent-backed, the girls went along the rows, pushing the oats as they
went into bundles bigger than themselves, trying to keep the feathery
heads as much as possible at one end. Round each bundle Ishmael pulled a
roughly-twisted rope of the oats, tugging it fast; and when it was
Blanche's bundle be spanned, then his hands would touch hers through the
glossy straws. Every now and again, for change of labour, the girls
would stagger under a heavy sheaf to where one or two others lay ready
and prop them up against each other, with a careful eye to the wind,
lest, if the sheaves were not built solidly enough or fairly balanced,
they might be found spilt along the ground in the morning. And all
through the work, the sweeping up of the bundles, the twisting of the
ropes, the carrying and the stacking, the rustling noise