There Is An Invalid Boy In The Yard, Who Walks With A Similar
Stick.
The farmer is talking with a friend who has looked in from the
lane in passing, and carries a two-spean spud, or Canterbury hoe, with
points instead of a broad blade.
They are saying that it is a 'pretty
day,' 'pretty weather' - it is always 'pretty' with them, instead of fine.
Pretty weather for the hopping; and so that leads on to climbing up into
the loft and handling the golden scales. The man with the hoe dips his
brown fist in the heap and gathers up a handful, noting as he does so how
the crisp, brittle, leaf-life substance of the hops crackles, and yet
does not exactly break in his palm. They must be dry, yet not too dry to
go to powder. They cling a little to the fingers, adhering to the skin,
sticky. He looks for rust and finds none, and pronounces it a good
sample. 'But there beant nothen' now like they old Grapes used to be,' he
concludes. The pair have not long gone down the narrow stairs when a
waggon stops outside in the lane, and up comes the carter to speak with
the 'drier' - the giant trampling round in the pocket - and to see how the
hops 'be getting on.' In five minutes another waggoner looks in, then a
couple of ploughboys, next a higgler passing by; no one walks or rides or
drives past the hop-kiln without calling to see how things are going on.
The carters cannot stay long, but the boys linger, eagerly waiting a
chance to help the 'drier,' even if only to reach him his handkerchief
from the nail. Round and round in the pocket brings out the perspiration,
and the dust of the hops gets into the air-passages and thickens on the
skin of his face. One of the lads has to push the hops towards him with a
rake. 'Don't you step on 'em too much, that'll break 'em.' On the light
breeze that comes now and then a little chaff floats in at the open
window from the threshing. A crooked sort of face appears in the doorway,
the body has halted halfway up - a semi-gipsy face - and the fellow thrusts
a basket before him on the floor. 'Want any herrings?' 'No, thankie - no,'
cries the giant. 'Not to-day, measter; thusty enough without they.'
Herrings are regularly carried round in hop-time to all the gardens, and
there is a great sale for them among the pickers. By degrees the 'drier'
rises higher in the pocket, coming up, as it were, through the floor
first his shoulders, then his body, and now his knees are visible. This
is the ancient way of filling a hop pocket; a machine is used now in
large kilns, but here, where there is only one cone, indicative of a
small garden, the old method is followed.
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