Warm colours on the down: Guardian country diary 100 years ago

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 18 August 1917From a Southern County, 16 August
A wind which sets thistle-down flying across the lane shakes the wheat sheaves lightly; you can hear ever so slight a singing as it searches between the stooks and in the hollow of the straws. On this upland a waggon is at work and children are gleaning – leasing, as we call it here; – not so many of them, as years ago, for there is no water-mill by the river where a small sack could be