‘You are a very rude old woman,’ he cried out. ‘First you mess all our nice herbs about with your horrid brown fingers and sniff at them with your long nose till no one else will care to buy them, and then you say it’s all bad stuff, though the duke’s cook himself buys all his herbs from us.’
The old woman looked sharply at the saucy boy, laughed unpleasantly, and said:
‘So you don’t like my long nose, sonny? Well, you shall have one yourself, right down to your chin.’
As she spoke she shuffled towards the hamper of cabbages, took up one after another, squeezed them hard, and threw them back, muttering again, ‘Bad stuff, bad stuff.’
‘Don’t waggle your head in that horrid way,’ begged Jem anxiously. ‘Your neck is as thin as a cabbage-stalk, and it might easily break and your head fall into the basket, and then who would buy anything?’
‘Don’t you like thin necks?’ laughed the old woman. ‘Then you sha’n’t have any, but a head stuck close between your shoulders so that it may be quite sure not to fall off.’
‘Don’t talk such nonsense to the child,’ said the mother at last.
‘If you wish to buy, please make haste, as you are keeping other customers away.’
‘Very well, I will do as you ask,’ said the old woman, with an angry look. ‘I will buy these six cabbages, but, as you see, I can only walk with my stick and can carry nothing. Let your boy carry them home for me and I’ll pay him for his trouble.’
The little fellow didn’t like this, and began to cry, for he was afraid of the old woman, but his mother ordered him to go, for she thought it wrong not to help such a weakly old creature; so, still crying, he gathered the cabbages into a basket and followed the old woman across the Market Place.