a sweet smile, she was a daughter of whom any man might have been
proud. To my thinking, she was the belle of the village, and she made
a very pretty picture in her sun-bonnet, among the green and golden
tracery of the hop-bine in the hopping season accompanied by the
smaller members of the family. At the "crib" into which the hops are
picked, many bushels proved their industry, and there were no leaves
or rubbish to call for rebuke at the midday and evening measurings.

I selected Jarge for foreman of the hop-picking as a most responsible
and trustworthy man; it was then that his sense of humour was most
conspicuous, a very important and valuable trait when 300 women and
children, and the men who supplied them with hops on the poles, have
to be kept cheerful and good-tempered every day and all day for three
weeks or a month, sometimes under trying conditions. For though
hop-picking is a fascinating occupation when the sun shines and the
sky is blue, it is otherwise when the mornings are damp or the hops
dripping with dew, and when heavy thunder-rains have left the ground
wet and cold.

He had a cheery word for all who were working steadily, and a
semi-sarcastic remark for the careless and unmethodical; a keen eye
for hops wasted and trodden into the ground, or for poles of
undersized hops, unwelcome to the pickers and hidden beneath those
from which the hops had been picked. He acted as buffer between
capital and labour, smoothing troubles over, telling me of the
pickers' difficulties, and explaining my side to the pickers when the
quality was poor and prices discouraging, so that the work went with a
swing and with happy faces and good-humoured chaff.

I was always pleased to hear the pickers singing, for I knew then that