'Don't we suffer from rheumatics? Well, you mightn't think so, but it ain't often any of us ails much. You see, being out in all weathers, we get hardened to it; and besides, we always take good care to keep our feet warm and dry--that's why we wear such heavy boots; and that's the chief thing to look after, if you don't want to catch cold; so people say. There ain't many of us but what is on the wrong side of thirty; four out of _my_ gang being widows this many a year, with grown-up sons and daughters; and it's the same in most gangs. Sometimes we have young women amongst us; but there's not many of 'em stays at it after they are married; not all the year through, I mean; perhaps coming for a day or two at the busiest times; but even then it hardly pays them, if they have a young family about 'em. The gangs of young women as you sometimes see, we don't count as belonging to us; they only coming up from Shropshire mostly--for a month or six weeks at the busiest part of the season. Children we never have working with us, I suppose because they wouldn't be careful enough about not crushing the fruit; which as _you_ know, it would never pay to send crushed fruit into market. For my part, I'm very glad as there is no children allowed amongst us, as though it ain't very hard work, it's terribly tedious and back-aching. When our children is old enough, we send the girls out to service somewhere; and there's always plenty of work for the lads, of some sort, about the farms; which is a good deal better than breaking their backs at _our_ work. 'We all of us in my gang live hereabouts, in those little cottages that you see yonder. Three shillings a week the rent of 'em is; but then there's a good piece of garden-ground at the back; and most of us has lodgers, young men what work on the farms and in the gardens mostly. Four rooms there is in my cottage; and I have three lodgers, sometimes four, two sleeping in one room. Good lads they are too. You see, as they get home before I do, I always lay my fire in the morning before I go out; and a neighbour of mine sets it alight in time for the kettle to be a-boiling when they come in to their tea at six o'clock; and they never misses leaving a potful of good strong tea for me to have when I get home; which you may be sure is all the more grateful through being the only hot drink I get all day, having only a drop of cold tea, which I carry in that can there, for my breakfast. And maybe if we are working near a public-house, we club up, and one of us goes and gets a drop of beer to drink with our dinners.