There was one class of lady-labourers, peculiar to that part <VG231.JPG> of the country, who were called Bondagers, - great strapping damsels of three or four - woman - power, whose occupation it was to draw water, and perform some of the rougher duties attendant upon agricultural pursuits. The sturdy legs of these young ladies were equipped in greaves of leather, which protected them from the cutting attacks of stubble, thistles, and all other lacerating specimens of botany, and their exuberant figures were clad in buskins, and many-coloured garments, that were not long enough to conceal their greaves and clod-hopping boots. Altogether, these young women, when engaged at their ordinary avocations by the side of a spring, formed no unpicturesque subject for the sketcher's pencil, and might have been advantageously transferred to canvas by many an artist who travels to greater distances in search of lesser novelties.* But many peculiar subjects for the pencil might there have been found. One day when they were all going to see the ewe-milking (which of itself would have furnished material --- * In north-Northumberland, farm-labourers are usually hired by the year - from Whitsunday to Whitsunday - and are paid mostly in kind, - so many bolls of oats, barley, and peas - so much flax and wheat - the keep of a cow, and the addition of a few pounds in money. Every hind or labourer is bound, in return for his house, to provide a woman labourer to the farmer, for so much a day throughout the year-which is usually tenpence a day in summer, and eightpence in winter; and as it often happens that he has none of his own family fit for the work, he has to hire a woman, at large wages, to do it. As the demand is greater than the supply there is not always a strict inquiry into the "bondager's" character. As with the case of hop-pickers - whom these bondagers somewhat resemble both socially and morally - they are oftentimes the inhabitants of densely-populated towns, who are tempted to live a brief agricultural life, not so much from the temptation of the wages, as from the desire to pass a summer-time in the country. -=- [232 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN ] for a host of sketches), they suddenly came upon the following scene. Round by the gable of a cottage was seated <VG232.JPG> a shock-headed rustic Absalom, and standing over him was another rustic, who, with a large pair of shears, was acting as an amateur Tonson, and was earnestly engaged in reducing the other's profuse head of hair; an occupation upon which he busied himself with more zeal than discretion. Of this little scene Miss Patty Honeywood forthwith made a memorandum.