But the planting of the potato patch is the chief work. The neat little furrows which mark each row of potatoes, allowing the hoe to be plied fearlessly before the potatoes show above ground, give a neatness to the cottage garden all the time while the soil is brown and bare.
Gamekeepers, though their work for wages is never done, yet have a few legitimate ways of adding to their incomes. Of course they have the opportunity of making a good deal of money if they trespass on their employers' time; but your keeper is an honest man, and his work is the object of his life. Most keepers are skilled vegetable gardeners, and may make a few shillings from peas and beans. Often enough they have a cunning way with flowers, though envious amateurs are free with their hints about the advantages to be gained from burying foxes to enrich the soil. We know one who will put in a fair day's work with spade and wheelbarrow before even the waggoners have stirred to give their horses breakfast. Going his rounds, the keeper marks good briers for budding; if he does not sell them, he will beg choice buds from rose-growers, and a year or two later the passer-by may be tempted to offer half-a-crown for the fine roses of his little plot. Possibly by this time his roses mean so much to him that he will make some such excuse as, "The missus, she thinks a mortal sight of they."
Keepers' Holidays
In February a few lucky gamekeepers may take a voluntary holiday, many must take an involuntary one—restful, perhaps, but not beneficial to pocket, health, and spirits. Keepers come and keepers go in these days when so many shoots are let for short terms. Resting between berths has one advantage—there can be no haunting worry as to the welfare of game. It would be interesting to collect cases of keepers and other country workers who have held the same berth for long periods, and have never been for a holiday right away from the scenes of their labours. Many and many old keepers would be found to have lived their whole lives on the estates where they were born. The best holiday for keepers would be a change to a bustling town; or they should be sent to a country where game is different to the game at home, the partridge man going to the home of grouse, the moorland keeper to the South.
Most keepers would be the first to say it is impossible that they should take holiday. Their work is peculiarly personal; and even when it is essential to arrange for somebody else to "give an eye to things," they can never feel happy and confident that all is going on in the accustomed way. The work, too, is cumulative—each item must be considered in its relation to several others. Even where there are several keepers, each on his own beat of a shoot, there is a jealous rivalry between them; and any one who went for a holiday would suspect advantage to be taken of his stock of breeding game in his absence. If there is one thing a keeper can endure less than being scored off by a poacher, it is to be scored off by a brother keeper.
An Advantage of Marriage
For the first time in many a long year a gamekeeper may find himself taking a holiday in the early days of February—either because he has left his place of his own free will, or has been dismissed. "Left owing to shoot being given up"—that is the usual reason for a keeper's enforced holiday. Married keepers seldom leave berths of their own accord except to better themselves; but a young bachelor keeper with a light heart may be fond of change, and scores of places are open to him from which married men are barred. Often he can afford to take a holiday while he looks about for a new berth; he can find lodgings anywhere, and what with odd jobs and the money he has saved he can exist comfortably until he finds an employer to suit him. The married keeper is not so light-hearted, and perhaps on this account the best permanent berths go to the married men. The chance of such a berth gives the country maiden her best chance of bagging an elusive bachelor. Sometimes she captures the heart of a bachelor before he has found a berth that will support a wife; then he will advertise for a place, making the ambiguous statement: "Married when suited." No doubt some keepers who have issued this form of advertisement could tell strange stories of the applications received.