I looked at him helplessly, and wished he would pick the strawberries himself.
“Look here,” he said, stooping over a plant, and letting a great scarlet berry specked with golden seeds fall over into his hand. “Now see: finger nail and thumb nail; turn ’em into scissors; draw one against the other, and the stalk’s through. That’s the way to do it, and the rest of the bunch not hurt. Now then, your back’s younger than mine. Go ahead.”
I felt hot and uncomfortable, but I took the rhubarb leaf, stepped in amongst the clean straw, and, using my nails as he had bid me, found that the strawberries came off wonderfully well.
“Only the ripe ones, boy; leave the others. Pick away. Poor old Tommy then!”
I looked up to see if he was speaking to me, but he had let one of the cats run up to his shoulder, and he was stroking the soft lithe creature as it rubbed itself against his head.
“That’s the way, boy,” he cried, as I scissored off two or three berries in the way he had taught me. “I like to see a chap with brains. Come, pick away.”
I did pick away, till I had about twenty in the soft green leaf, and then I stopped, knowing that in flowers and fruit I had twice as much as I should have obtained at the shop.
“Oh, come, get on,” he cried contemptuously. “You’re not half a fellow. Don’t stop. Does your back ache?”
“No, sir,” I said; “but—”
“Oh, you wouldn’t earn your salt as a picker,” he cried. As he said this he came on to the bed, and, bending down, seemed to sweep a hand round the strawberry plant, gathering its leaves aside, and leaving the berries free to be snipped off by the right finger and thumb. He kept on bidding me pick away, but he sheared off three to my one, and at the end of a few minutes I was holding the rhubarb leaf against my breast to keep the fruit from falling over the side.