Meanwhile, the speaking was beginning from the first cart.  A land girl who had played a rousing part in the recruiting campaign of the early summer was speaking in a high voice, clearly heard by the crowd.  She was tall and pretty, and spoke without a sign of hesitation or self-consciousness.  She gloried in the harvest, in the splendid news from the war, in the growth of the Woman’s Land Army.  “We’ve just been proud to do our bit at home while our boys have been fighting over there.  They’ll be home soon, perhaps, and won’t we give them a welcome!  And we’ll show them the harvest that we’ve helped to reap—­the biggest harvest that England’s ever known!—­the harvest that’s going to beat the Boche.”  The young simple voice flowed on, with its simple story and its note of enthusiasm, and sometimes of humour.  “It’s hard work, but we love it!  It’s cold work often, but we love it!  The horses and the cows and the pigs—­they’re naughty often, but they’re nice!—–­yes, the pigs, too.  It’s the beasts and the fields and the open air we love!”

Betty looked at Jenny with a grin.

“Jenny!—­them pigsties yesterday; d’ye think she’s ever cleaned one out?”

“I know she has,” said Jenny confidentially.  “She’s Farmer Green’s girl, out Ralstone way.  Ee says there ain’t nothing she can’t do.  Ee don’t want no men while he’s got ’er.  They offered him soldiers, and ee wouldn’t have ’em.”

* * * * *

“Silly, sentimental young woman,” said a tall man, with a pipe in his mouth, who had just lounged up to the outskirts of the crowd, from a side street.  “Who’s she going to take in here?  What’s the good of talking poetry about farming to a lot of country people?  A London shop-girl, I guess.  What does she know about it?”

“You bets she knows a lot,” said a young man beside him, who, to judge from his uniform, was one of the Canadians employed at Ralstone camp.  He had been taken with the “sentimental young woman,” and was annoyed by the uncivil remarks of his neighbour.  “Wonder what farm she’s on?”

“Oh, you know these parts?” said the other, removing his pipe for a moment and looking down on his companion.

“Well, not exactly.”  The reply was hesitating.  “My grandfather went out to Canada from a place near here sixty years ago.  I used to hear him and my mother talk about Millsborough.”

“Beastly hole!” said the other, replacing his pipe.

“I don’t agree with you at all,” said the other angrily.  “It’s as nice a little town of its size as you’d find anywhere.”

The other shrugged his shoulders.  A man a few yards off in the crowd happened at that moment to be looking in the direction of the two speakers.  It was the ticket-collector at the station, enjoying an afternoon off.  He recognized the taller of the two men as the “dook” he had seen at Millsborough station about a week ago.  The man’s splendid carriage and iron-grey head were