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
all was well. Sometimes, after a trying day, when Jarge had been
called upon to expostulate, or "to talk" more than usual, the corners
of his mouth would take a downward turn, and he complained, perhaps,
of gipsies or tramps whom I was obliged to employ when the crop was
heavy, though they were kept in a gang apart from the villagers; but
he always came up happy again next morning, the mouth corners tending
upwards, and his broad and beaming smile with a radiance like the
rising sun on a midsummer morning.
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