How delicious they smelt in the old-fashioned pottles which we never see now—long narrow cones, with a cross-handle, over which, when filled, or supposed to be filled, for a big strawberry would block up the narrow part of the cone at times, a few leaves were placed, and then a piece of white paper was tied over with a bit of bast. Nowadays deep and shallow punnets are the order of the day, and a good thing too.
Flowers! There seemed to me enough to last London for a month; and I was going, after a look round, to tell Ike that I was afraid we should have to take our load back, when I felt a heavy thump on the back of my head, which knocked off my cap.
Nothing annoyed me more as a boy than for my cap to be knocked off. Shock knew that, and it had been one of his favourite tricks, so that I knew, as I thought, whence this piece of annoyance had come, and, picking up the small hard cabbage that had been thrown, I determined to avenge myself by sending it back with a good aim.
True enough there was Master Shock, lying flat on his chest with his chin resting in his hands, and his feet kicking up behind, now going up and down, now patting together, for he had taken off his boots.
Shock was having a good stare over the market from his elevated position on the top of the baskets; and, taking a good aim as I thought, I threw the little hard stale cabbage, and then dodged round the side of the cart. I stood aghast directly after, beside a pile of baskets, and watch a quarrel that had just begun a dozen yards away, where a big red-faced man was holding a very fluffy white hat in his hand and brushing it with his arm, and bandying angry words with a rough-looking young market porter, who, with a great flat basket under one arm and his other through a knot, was speaking menacingly—
“Don’t you hit me again.”
“Yes, I will, and knock your ugly head off if you do that again,” said the man with the white hat.
“Do what again?”
“Do what again!—why, throw rotten cabbages at my hat.”
“I didn’t.”