CHAPTER VIII

HAYMAKING. 'THE JUKE'S COUNTRY'

A rattling, thumping, booming noise, like the beating of their war drums
by savages, comes over the hedge where the bees are busy at the bramble
flowers. The bees take no heed, they pass from flower to flower, seeking
the sweet honey to store at home in the hive, as their bee ancestors did
before the Roman legions marched to Cowey Stakes. Their habits have not
changed; their 'social' relations are the same; they have not called in
the aid of machinery to enlarge their liquid, wealth, or to increase the
facility of collecting it. There is a low murmur rather than a buzz along
the hedgerow; but over it the hot summer breeze brings the thumping,
rattling, booming sound of hollow metal striking against the ground or in
contact with other metal. These ringing noises, which so little accord
with the sweet-scented hay and green hedgerows, are caused by the careless
handling of milk tins dragged hither and thither by the men who are
getting the afternoon milk ready for transit to the railway station miles
away. Each tin bears a brazen badge engraved with the name of the milkman
who will retail its contents in distant London. It may be delivered to the
countess in Belgravia, and reach her dainty lip in the morning chocolate,
or it may be eagerly swallowed up by the half-starved children of some
back court in the purlieus of the Seven Dials.

Sturdy milkmaids may still be seen in London, sweeping the crowded
pavement clear before them as they walk with swinging tread, a yoke on
their shoulders, from door to door. Some remnant of the traditional dairy
thus survives in the stony streets that are separated so widely from the
country. But here, beside the hay, the hedgerows, the bees, the flowers
that precede the blackberries--here in the heart of the meadows the
romance has departed. Everything is mechanical or scientific. From the
refrigerator that cools the milk, the thermometer that tests its
temperature, the lactometer that proves its quality, all is mechanical
precision. The tins themselves are metal--wood, the old country material
for almost every purpose, is eschewed--and they are swung up into a waggon
specially built for the purpose. It is the very antithesis of the jolting
and cumbrous waggon used for generations in the hay-fields and among the
corn. It is light, elegantly proportioned, painted, varnished--the work
rather of a coachbuilder than a cartwright. The horse h