Chapter Twenty One.
“How long’s he going to stop, Master Tom?” said David the next morning about breakfast-time, for he had come, according to custom, to see if cook wanted anything else on account of the company.
He had stumbled upon Tom, who was strolling about the grounds, waiting for his cousin to come down to the meal waiting ready, his uncle sitting reading by the window.
“He’s going back to-morrow, David.”
“And a jolly good job too, sir, I says,” cried David, “whether you like it or whether you don’t.”
Tom looked at him wonderingly.
“Yes, sir, you may stare, but I speaks out. I like you, Master Tom, and allus have, since I see you was a young gent as had a respect for our fruit. Of course I grows it for you to heat, but it ain’t Christian-like for people to come in my garden and ravage the things away, destroying and spoiling what ain’t ripe. I know, and your uncle knows, when things ought to be eaten, and then it’s a pleasure to see an apricot picked gentle like, so as it falls in your hand ready to be laid in a basket o’ leaves proper to go into the house. You can take ’em then; it makes you smile and feel a kind o’ pleasure in ’em, because they’re ripe. But I’d sooner grow none than see ’em tore off when they’re good for nowt. I didn’t see ’em go, Master Tom, but four o’ my chyce Maria Louisas has been picked, and I wouldn’t insult you, sir, by even thinking it was you. It wasn’t Pete Warboys, because he ain’t left his trail. Who was it, then, if it wasn’t your fine noo cousin?”
Tom said nothing, but thought of the hard green pears Sam had thrown at Pete Warboys.
“Just you look here, Master Tom,” continued the gardener, leading the way to the wall. “There’s where one was tore off, and a big bit o’ shoot as took two year to grow, fine fruit-bearing wood, but he off with it. Yes, there it is,” he cried, pouncing upon a newly-broken-off twig, “just as I expected. There’s where the pear was broke off arterward, leaving all the stalk on. Why, when that pear had been fit to pick, sir, it would have come off at that little jynt as soon as you put your hand under it and lifted it up. Why, I’ve know’d them pears, sir, as good as say thankye as soon as they felt your hand under ’em, for they’d growed too ripe and heavy to hang any longer. Dear, dear, dear, who’d be a gardener?”