No. VIII
'CHERRY RIPE'
I
This is an awful rum story about the extraordinary cunning of a man generally known as 'Cherry Ripe,' from selling cherries; and to tell it right I must first explain about our cricket ground and a wood and a field. After the cricket ground comes a narrow wood, well known as the place for fights, and also wood-pigeons' nests, which breed there in great quantities. It is a long and narrow wood, and then comes a field, also long but not so narrow. This field is a very up-and-down field, with hollows in it, and at the bottom, in one corner, a drinking-place for cows has been arranged, where yellow irises grow in summer, and where most of our tame frogs come from. There is a clump of trees in this field, and a hawk once built in them; but Freckles found the nest and took the eggs, so the hawk did not build there again. After the up-and-down field there comes an old, rather broken wall, and inside the wall is the orchard and nursery garden of Cherry Ripe.
Needless to say his real name was not 'Cherry Ripe' but Jenkins—not any relation to the Jenkins at Merivale, though chaps who wanted to rot Jenkins always pretended that Cherry Ripe was his father, which much annoyed Jenkins. Because this Cherry Ripe was a fierce and a common man, and had been known to be dismissed with a caution for ill-treating a horse, and was no friend to us either.
He made his living by fruit and vegetables; and at the right season of the year sold cherries, of which he had many fine trees in his nursery garden. He also had apples and pears and gooseberries in great abundance. He also laid out large pieces of his nursery garden in spring flowers for market, and he grew onions and turnips and rhubarb, and many other uninteresting things.
We naturally went there to see how it looked from time to time, and he chased us a good deal over the field; but, when we were once in the wood, he was of course powerless. In fact, he never caught anybody in fair hunting except Chilvers, who was once down by the pond collecting waterman beetles in his shoe, having nothing else to do it with. But Chilvers had never been in the nursery garden in his life, and told Cherry Ripe so. Only he refused to believe Chilvers, and said that he was trespassing just as much in the field as he would have been in the orchard. Which, in its paltry way, was true. Chilvers then offered him a penny and an Indian coin for twelve waterman beetles; and all he did was to say "No cheek!" and box Chilvers on the ear and tell him to be off. So he made a bitter enemy of Chilvers.
This Cherry Ripe was old and ugly. He never seemed to shave, and yet his beard never seemed to grow. What there was looked a mangy grey streaked with brown. He wore an old hat that had once been black, but was now rather inclined to turn green, and he had glittering eyes, one of which watered. He had also a curious way of lifting up and down his eyebrows, which young Smythe said showed a bad disposition, and was common to gorillas. He had been heard to laugh when picking apples with his daughters. But he never laughed at us, and when we took to calling him 'Cherry Ripe,' he hated us, and often shook his fist at us from a distance.
So we then felt something had to be done against him to score off him.
When this was decided upon, Steggles and Methuen and Pedlar and myself—me being Weston minor—and Chilvers went into committee, as it is called, and in fact we had a regular meeting. Many others wanted to join, but we felt five was enough, and we all had a jolly special private good reason for going into committee against Cherry Ripe.