Part 18 (2/2)
”That's right, Phil, so let's go and get the tree split first; and then we'll turn up the old cuc.u.mber bed in fine style,” said Harry.
Sam was soon found, but Sam was busy. Sam was weeding the ”inguns,” and ”inguns was more consekens than the nasty wopses.” So Sam had to be coaxed and cajoled; but Sam would not be either coaxed or cajoled, for he was very grumpy indeed; and the reason was, that he had had the lawn to mow that morning, and there had been no dew, and the consequence was, the gra.s.s, instead of being easy to cut from its crispness and dampness, was very limp and wiry, so that poor Sam had a very hard and unsatisfactory job, and the effect of it all was that he was as limp and wiry as the gra.s.s had been. It was of no use to say, ”Do, Sam,” or ”Do, please, Sam,” or ”That's a good old chap, now,” or anything of that kind; for Sam weeded away viciously amongst the onions, and turned a deaf ear to everything; so Harry, the impetuous, was beginning to grow cross too, and to repent that they had not obtained the worms at first, when Sam showed the weak side of his nature, and from that moment he was a conquered man.
”Ugh!” said Sam, straightening himself with a groan, and rubbing his back where it ached, ”Ugh! how blazing hot the sun is--always does s.h.i.+ne like that when I be weeding. Oh, my back! Oh, dear!” And then Sam groaned, and stooped to his work again, saying, ”And n.o.body never asks n.o.body to have so much as a drop o' beer.”
”I'll fetch you some beer, Sam, if you'll go with us,” said Harry.
But Sam didn't want any beer. Oh, no! He could do his work without beer. He never did do more than wet his lips; and so on. But Sam had given up the key of his fortress, and very soon Harry had been up to the house to fetch a jug of foaming, country, home-brewed ale, such as would really refresh the old man in his toil; for the day had set in excessively hot, and bade fair to become worse--if such an expression is not a contradiction. So Harry took the cool jug up to the old man, but ”No! he didn't want beer!”
But he did, though he would not own to it, and what was more, he wanted coaxing; and until he was coaxed, Sam growled away as much as ever, and weeded his onions.
”I say, Sam,” said Harry, with a knowing grin upon his countenance, and pus.h.i.+ng the jug just under the old man's nose, ”I say, how good it smells!”
Sam couldn't help it, he got a good whiff of the foaming ale in his nostrils, and he surrendered, sighed, and stretched out his hand for the jug, and then took such a hearty draught, that it seemed as though he never wanted to breathe again.
”Ha-a-a-a,” said Sam at last, with a comical look at Harry.
”Shall I fetch you the wedges, Sam?” said Harry.
”Eh?” said Sam.
”Shall I fetch the wedges?” said Harry again.
Sam did not answer for a minute, for his face was buried in the beer jug; but when he took it away again, he gave another sigh, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and then said in a very different tone of voice to the one he had spoken in before--
”Well, I 'spose you may as well.”
So the wedges and the great mallet were soon fetched, when they all went off to the fallen willow, which soon gave way to the blows bestowed upon it, and displayed a large hollow containing the papery nest of the wasps.
Fred gazed with astonishment at the curious structure, with its innumerable cells, many of which contained the grubs mentioned in connection with the fis.h.i.+ng excursion. The poor wasps were lying dead by the hundred, and were shaken out, brushed into a heap, and then buried by Sam, who seemed to have an idea that, if this latter process were not attended to, they would most probably come to life again.
There was no fear of that, however, for the suffocating had been most effectually performed, and not a living wasp was visible.
By means of a little careful cutting, the nest was removed from the hollow tree almost entire, and, without remembering to say ”thank you”
to old Sam, the boys carried the nest up to the house, and then went in search of their worms. Harry soon fetched a fork, and Philip carried the moss-bag, while Fred, who hardly liked to touch the wriggling, ”nasty things,” as he called them, looked on.
Now Fred was not much of a student of nature after all, or he would not have called worms ”nasty things,” but have taken more notice of them as they were turned out of their damp bed, and seen that they were clothed with a skin whose surface reflected colours of prismatic hue, as bright and perfect as those seen upon some pearly sh.e.l.ls. He would have seen how wonderfully the worms were constructed for the fulfilment of their apportioned position in the animal kingdom; how, without legs, or the peculiar twist of the snake, they crept swiftly over the ground by means of their many-ringed bodies; and also learned that, by their constant tunnelling of the ground, they prevented the water that sank from the surface from lying stagnant amidst the roots of the trees, and thus rotting them, but enabled it to fertilise larger s.p.a.ces. Then, too, by their peculiar habit of drawing down dead leaves and straws, and small twigs, how all these rotted beneath the surface, and helped to renew the strength of the earth. Their casts, too, those peculiar little heaps which they throw up at the mouth of their dwellings, formed another source of fertility to the earth, by bringing up from beneath the surface unspent soil, and spreading it upon the top.
However, I must say, that I believe the boys thought of nothing else then, but of getting the finest red worms, and those marked with yellow rings round the body, as being especial favourites with the perch at the great lake.
At last a sufficiency had been obtained and put on one side in a cool place; and now a tin box with a pierced lid was brought out half filled with sand, and the boys started off to the village butcher's, to get some gentles or maggots. This time they did not choose the path by Water Lane, as on the morning when they went to buy the new water-bottle, but strolled round by the road, talking earnestly of the sports of the following day. Fred listened very attentively as they trudged along, and rather strange were the ideas he had stored up respecting the big lake by the time they reached the butcher's; it contained fish of wonderful size--monsters, which always lay snugly at the bottom of deep holes beneath overhanging trees--such profoundly deep holes! and when, by a wonderful chance, one of these enormous fellows was hooked, down he went to the bottom and struck his tail into the mud, so that it was impossible to draw him out, and then of course the line broke.
”Ah,” Harry said, ”there were wonderful fish in that great clear-watered lake, with its bright gurgling stream, that came das.h.i.+ng down from the hills, and entered one end to leave it at the other in a cascade, that went plas.h.i.+ng down the mossy stones, and along in a chain of streamlets and pools through the dark recesses of the wood, till it joined the river half a mile below. There never could have been such beautiful golden-scaled carp anywhere else, nor such finely-marked perch; while, as for eels, they were enormous. The pike, too, were said to be so large and so tame, that they would come to the side to be fed, and therefore would have been easy to capture; but his lords.h.i.+p forbade any one pike-fis.h.i.+ng in his lake, this being a luxury he retained for himself, except on special occasions, when he invited a friend to join him.”
By listening to such a glowing account of the place, Fred's mind grew so excited that he would have liked to have started at once for the lake, and feasted his eyes upon the wonders; but the butcher's was now reached, and the fat dame in the shop having been told of the cause of their visit, ”Willum,” the boy, was called, who armed himself with a skewer, and then took the lads to a vile-smelling shed, where lay a heap of sheepskins and a bullock's hide, and from the insides of these, and, by poking out from amongst tendons of an old s.h.i.+n bone, the little tin box was soon filled with the great, fat, white maggots, the end of whose life, the beginning, and the middle, and all the rest of it, seemed to be to keep continually in motion with one incessant wriggle. The boy was recompensed with twopence, which he acknowledged by a tug at his greasy hair with his dirty fingers; and then a visit was paid to the shop, where Harry bought a sixpenny ball of twine, and three sheets of white and blue tea paper for some particular purpose, which Philip seemed to be alive to, but which they would not reveal to their cousin until they returned home.
Only one more visit had to be paid, and that was to a pretty whitewashed and thatched cottage, standing in its little garden, which teemed with fruit and flowers,--bright crimson Prince of Wales's feathers, c.o.c.ks...o...b.., stocks, wallflowers, and roses; while gooseberries and currants were bending the trees down to the earth with the weight heaped upon the boughs. The window of this cottage was decorated with about half a dozen gla.s.s jars, wherein reposed, in all their sticky richness, the toffee, lemon stick, and candy which old Mrs Birch used to make for the delectation of the boys and girls round. She had no brilliantly-coloured sweets; no sticks veined with blue, green, yellow, and red upon pure white ground; no crystallised drops, or those of clear rose-colour, for all her ”suckers,” as they were called in the neighbourhood, were home-made, and she used to show all her customers the golden bright bra.s.s pan which hung upon the wall by the fire, as the one in which all her succulent sweets were made. And where indeed were there such others? Even town-bred Fred, who had feasted on Parisian bonbons, and made himself ill by eating strange fruits off Christmas-trees, owned to the purity and delectability of old Mrs Birch's ”b.u.t.terscotch;” while, as to the brown lemon stick, it was beyond praise. Capital customers were the boys to the dame, who was a wonderful business-like old body in her spotted blue print dress, and clean white muslin handkerchief pinned tightly over her neck; and she told the boys in confidence what a wonderfully extended trade she might do if she gave credit; but how determined she was never to carry on business except upon ready-money principles; which had been her intention ever since William, the butcher's boy, ran up a score of tenpence three-farthings,--a score that had never been paid to that day, and, what was more, the old lady expected that it never would be.
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