In the second wagon, Rachel Henderson in full land-dress--tunic,
knee-breeches, and leggings--stood in the front of the cart, guiding two
white horses, their manes and tails gaily plaited with ribbons, and
scarlet badges on their snowy heads.

"Eh, but yon's a fine woman!" said an old farmer of the humbler sort to
his neighbour. "Yo'll not tell me she's a land lassie?"

"Noa, noa; she's the new farmer at Great End--a proud body, they say, an'
a great hustler! The men say she's allus at 'em. But they don't mind
her neither. She treats 'em well. Them's her two land girls walking
beside."

For Betty and Jenny mounted guard, their harvest rakes on their
shoulders, beside their mistress, who attracted all eyes as she passed,
and knew it. Behind her in the cart sat Janet Leighton; and the two
remaining seats were filled by the Vicar of Ipscombe and Lady Alicia
Shepherd, the wife of the owner of Great End Farm and of the middle-sized
estate to which the farm belonged.

Lady Alicia was a thin woman, with an excitable temperament, to judge
from her restless mouth and eyes, which were never still for a moment.
She was very fashionably dressed and held a lace parasol. The crowd
scarcely recognized her, which annoyed her, for in her own estimation she
was an important member of the Women's Committee which looked after the
land girls. The war had done a great deal for Lady Alicia. It had dragged
her from a sofa, where she was rapidly becoming a neurasthenic invalid,
and had gradually drilled her into something like a working day. She
lived in a flurry of committees; but as committees must exist, and Lady
Alicias must apparently be on them; she had found a sort of vocation, and
with the help of other persons of more weight she had not done badly.

She did not quite understand how it was that she found herself in Miss
Henderson's wagon. The committee had refused to have a wagon of its own,
and the good-natured vicar had arranged it for her. She did not herself
much like Miss Henderson. Her husband had sent her to call upon the new
tenants, and she had been much puzzled. They were ladies, she supposed.
They spoke quite nicely, and Miss Henderson seemed to be the daughter of
a clergyman. But she was afraid they were dreadful Socialists! She had
talked to Miss Henderson about the awful--the _wicked_--wages that the
Brookshire board had just fixed for the labourer.

"My husband says they'll simply crush the life out of farming. We sh