Chapter Sixteen.
The late Albert Smith, in his Christopher Tadpole, describes a lady whose weakness was periwinkles. Old Hannah likewise had a weakness, but it was not for that unpleasant-looking curly mollusc which has to be wriggled out with a pin, but, as she expressed it, “a big mellow Williams pear with a maddick in it.”
Old Hannah’s “maddick” was, of course, a maggot in north-country language, but it was not that she had a liking for the larva of a fly, but for the fruit in which that maggot lived for as a gardener’s wife she knew well enough that very often those were the finest pears, the first to ripen, that they fell off the tree and were useless for the purpose of dessert, and were often left to rot. So that, knowing well his wife’s weakness, old Tummus would pick up a fallen pear when he saw it under the tree in September, show it to old Dunton, who would nod his head, and the destination of that pear would be Tummus’s pocket.
Now there was a fine old pyramid pear-tree not far from the green walk, and while hoeing away at the weeds that morning, where the rich soil made them disposed to grow rampant, old Tummus came upon “the very moral” of the pear his old woman would like. It was big, mellow, and streaked with vermilion and patched with gold; and had evidently lain there two nights, for its fragrant odour had attracted a slug, which had carved a couple of round cells in the side, close to where the round black hole betrayed where the maggot lived, and sundry other marks showed that it was still at hand.
Tummus picked up that pear and laid it in the green cup formed by a young broccoli plant, went on with his hoeing till the bell rang, and was half-way to the gate, stick and lunch-basket in hand, when he remembered the pear, and hurried back—that is to say, he walked back—not quite so slowly as usual, for Tummus never ran. A man that came from “his parts” remembered that the old man had been known to run once, at some cottagers’ festival, but that was ages before, and ever since he had walked very deliberately.
Anyhow, he found the pear, and was returning to cut across the green path, when he caught sight of Daniel Barnett, and stopped short.
“I forgetted as poor old Dunton’s dead,” he thought, “He’ll turn nasty if I ask him about the pear; and what’s he a-doing of?”
Old Tummus peered through a great row of scarlet-runners and stared at his superior, and saw him bend over something on the green path, and then dart in among the bushes and disappear.