I stood out against those two men for about a half an hour, and then I began to give in a little, and think that it might be nice to roll along on my own little wheels over their beautiful smooth roads, and stop and smell the hedges and pick flowers whenever I felt like it; and so it ended in my agreeing to do the Exmoor country on a tricycle while Mr. Poplington and Jone went on bicycles.  As to getting the machines, Mr. Poplington said he would attend to that.  There was people in London who hired them to excursionists, and all he had to do was to send an order and they would be on hand in a day or two; and so that matter was settled and he wrote to London.  I thought Mr. Poplington was a little old for that sort of exercise, but I found he had been used to doing a great deal of cycling in the part of the country where he lives; and besides, he isn’t as old as I thought he was, being not much over fifty.  The kind of air that keeps a country always green is wonderful in bringing out early red and white in a person.

“Everything happens wonderfully well, madam,” said he, coming in after he had been to post his letter in a red iron box let into the side of the Wesleyan chapel, “doesn’t it?  Now here we’re not able to start on our journey for two or three days, and I have just been told that the great hay-making in the big meadow to the south of the village is to begin to-morrow.  They make the hay there only every other year, and they have a grand time of it.  We must be there, and you shall see some of our English country customs.”

We said we’d be sure to be in for that sort of thing.

I wish, madam, you could have seen that great hayfield.  It belongs to the lord of the manor, and must have twenty or thirty acres in it.  They’ve been three or four days cutting the grass on it with a machine, and now there’s been nearly two days with hardly any rain, only now and then some drizzling, and a good, strong wind, which they think here is better for the hay-making than sunshine, though they don’t object to a little sun.  All the people in the village who had legs good enough to carry them to that field went to help make hay.  It was a regular holiday, and as hay is clean, nearly everybody was dressed in good clothes.  Early in the morning some twenty regular farm laborers began raking the hay at one end of the field, stretching themselves nearly the whole way across it, and as the day went on more and more people came, men and women, high and low.  All the young women and some of the older ones had rakes, and the way they worked them was amazing to see, but they turned over the hay enough to dry it.  As to schoolgirls and boys, there was no end of them in the afternoon, for school let out early.  Some of them worked, but most of them played and cut up monkey-shines on the hay.  Even the little babies was brought on the field, and nice, soft beds made for them under the trees at one side.