“Heat it! D’yer take me for a bloomin’ Nebuchadnezzar? Besides, it’s that there ondergestuble——!”
“But Nebuchadnezzar didn’t eat fruit. He hadn’t got the chance, poor fellow. He could only find grass to eat.”
“Grass ’ood’n’t be so ondergestuble as fruit, I reckon. Blame me if you town folks don’t think a man can live on nothink. Now, a pound or two o’ steak, a few rashers o’ fat bacon, an’ a few heggs for bre’kfuss—that’s more my line. Hexpeck a Christian man to heat fruit——!”
“But you expect people to buy yours, don’t you?”
“Naw, I don’t hexpeck nothin’.”
“Then why do you grow it?”
“Bekause I suppose I’m a fool; that’s about the size of it. Good day t’ye, mister.”
XXXI
The history of Faversham town is extremely long and interesting, but as it does not lie on the direct road to Dover, it will not be necessary to go into a very detailed account of it. It is a curious, half-maritime borough whose Mayor wears a chain of office decorated with badges of oars and rudders; a town whose records include such events as the burial of King Stephen, his Queen, and his son Eustace; and at a very much later date, the attempted escape of James the Second. Faversham fishermen recognized the fugitive King as he crouched, shivering in the hoy at Shellness on that bitter December morning of 1688, and, robbing him of his watch and chain and his money, they brought him a prisoner to the Mayor’s house, where he was detained two days, guarded by a mob of countrymen, on whom his terror-stricken appeals to be allowed to escape had no effect.