noon
Here wives walked barefoot , bent , with baskets on their arm from which they kept taking potatoes and laying them , at a foot 's distance , in the open trench . In a corner of the field stood the farmer , his big body leaning on a stick ; and his dark eyes watched his labourers . There , in the midst of them , was Horieneke , bent also like the others , in her coarse workaday clothes , with a basket of seed-potatoes on her arm ; and her red-gold curls now hung , like long corkscrews , wet against her face ; and every now and then she would draw herself up , tossing her head back to keep them out of her eyes . At noon , under the blazing sun , all three started for the wood , after blackberries . Trientje was in her cotton pinafore , with a straw hat on her head and a wicker basket on her arm . Lowietje stood in his worn breeches and his torn shirt ; in his pocket he had a new climbing-cord . Each dragged Poentje by one hand , Poentje who still went about in his little shirt and , with his wide-straddling little bare legs , trotted on between brother and sister .