WOMEN BEETLING CLOTHES
Reading edition
I see three women by a river: they are so close to me that I can hear them talking and laughing. One of them is an oldish creature, the other two are young and dark. They are on their knees on the bank, beetling clothes. One of them gets up—a fine, white-skinned girl—and tucking her petticoats about her thighs, goes into the stream and swishes the clothes several times to and fro in the brown-clear water. Then she throws them out to her companions on the bank, and the beetling process is repeated—each garment being laid on a flat stone and pounded vigorously until clean. The women do not see me (I am standing on a bridge, with a rowan-bush partly between them and me), so I can watch them to my heart’s content.