“It really seems as if I ought to think you are a bad lot,” I observed, laughing.
“And so we are, at least that’s what folks who jaw to us for our good tell us,” he replied, at the same time giving a knowing wink.
“Do you make much sugar at your game?” he inquired with apparent interest.
“Not nearly so much,” I replied, “as I think I should at strawberry-picking.”
To this he made no rejoinder but shook his head deprecatingly, seeing that I was quizzing him.
“Well,” said he, resuming, “you know that gorgios say the gypsy is a lazy, good-for-nothing fellow, and if he works at all it’s only a kind of accident, but you’ve been among us and know different, how in the season we start sometimes at four o’clock in the morning and work all day till seven or eight at night. Some folks think strawberry-picking is a easy job, but let them as thinks so try it; let ’em work in the glare of the sun day after day till their eyes smart as ours often do. I’ve known many a man who’s had to knock off ’cause his eyes was so bad,—and they’d find too there can’t be a more back-aching job than pickin’ strawberries hour after hour.
“You might put that in your lil, and perhaps some of the folks as reads it’ll think all the better of us.
“Of course some seasons are better than others,” he resumed; “this year some of our folk will come off badly, the frost ‘played up’ the bloom anyhow. A while back the flowers looked fine, but a frost come one night and afterwards a lot of ’em had black eyes”—here he took a contemplative pull at his pipe and added, “Strawberries don’t like ’em any more than we do. Many of the fields were scarcely touched by the frost, but I know of one family who have come a good many miles and spent nearly all they had to get here, and up to now they’ve scarcely done three days’ work, but we in our field have been at work for a fortnight. I reckon they’ll have a rough time next winter unless they do well at the hop country, which ain’t very likely, for hop-pickin’, as you know, ain’t so good pay as fruitin’.
“Shall we see you up there?” he asked, referring to the hop district.
“I hope to get there,” I replied.