Pretermitting the dog, important as he is, let us ask of the masterʼs dinner. He has a great hunk of cold bacon, from the cabbage–soup of yesterday, with three short bones to keep it together, and a cross junk from the clod of beef (out of the same great pot) which he will put up a tree for Tuesday; because, if it had been left at home, mother couldnʼt keep it from the children; who do scarce a stroke of work yet, and only get strong victuals to console them for school upon Sundays. Then upon Wednesday our noble peasant of this merry England will have come down to the scraping of bones; on Thursday he may get bread and dripping from some rich manʼs house; on Friday and Saturday nothing but bread, unless there be cold potatoes. And he will not have fed in this fat rich manner unless he be a good workman, a hater of public–houses, and his wife a tidy body.
Now this labourer who came out of the copse, with a fine appetite for his Mondayʼs dinner (for he had not been “spreeing” on Sunday), was no other than Jem—not Jem Pottles, of course, but the Jem who fell from the oak–branch, and must have been killed or terribly hurt but for Cradock Nowellʼs quickness. Everybody called him “Jem,” except those who called him “father;” and his patronymic, not being important, may as well continue latent. Now why could not Jem enjoy his dinner more thoroughly in the copse itself, where the witheys were gloved with silver and gold, and the primroses and the violets bloomed, and the first of the wood–anemones began to star the dead ash–leaves? In the first place, because in the timber–track happen he might see somebody just to give “good day” to; the chances were against it in such a lonesome place, still it might so happen; and a man who has been six hours at work in the deep recesses of a wood, with only birds and rabbits moving, is liable to a gregarious weakness, especially at feeding–time. Furthermore, this particular copse had earned a very bad name. It was said to be the harbourage of a white and lonesome ghost, a ghost with no consideration for embodied feelings, but apt to walk in the afternoon, in the glimpses of wooded sunshine. Therefore Jem was very uneasy at having to work alone there, and very angry with his mate for having that day abandoned him. And but that his dread of Mr. Garnet was more than supernatural, he would have wiped his billhook then and there, and gone all the way to the public–house to fetch back that mate for company.
Pondering thus, he followed the green track as far as the corner of the coppice hedge, and then he sat down on a mossy log, and began to chew more pleasantly. He had washed his hands at a little spring, and gathered a bit of watercress, and fixed his square of cold bacon cleverly into a mighty hunk of brown bread, like a whetstone in its socket; and truly it would have whetted any plain manʼs appetite to see the way he sliced it, and the intense appreciation.
With his mighty clasp–knife (straight, not curved like a gardenerʼs) he cut little streaky slips along, and laid each on a good thickness of crust, and patted it like a piece of butter, then fondly looked at it for a moment, then popped it in, with the resolution that the next should be a still better one, supposing such excellence possible. And all the while he rolled his tongue so, and smacked his lips so fervently, that you saw the man knew what he was about, dealt kindly with his hunger, and felt a good dinner—when he got it.
“There, Scratch,” he cried to his dog, after giving him many a taste, off and on, as in fairness should be mentioned; “hie in, and seek it there, lad.”
With that he tossed well in over the hedge—for he was proud of his dogʼs abilities—the main bone of the three (summum bonum from a canine point of view; and, after all, perhaps they are right), and the flat bone fell, it may be a rod or so, inside the fence of the coppice. Scratch went through the hedge in no time, having watched the course of the bone in air (as a cricketer does of the ball, or an astronomer of a comet) with his sweet little tail on the quiver. But Scratch, in the coppice, was all abroad, although he had measured the distance; and the reason was very simple—the bone was high up in the fork of a bush, and there it would stay till the wind blew. Now this apotheosis of the bone to the terrier was not proven; his views were low and practical; and he rushed (as all we earth–men do) to a lowering conclusion. The bone must have sunk into ĕraʼs bosom, being very sharp at one end, and heavy at the other. The only plan was to scratch for it, within a limited area; and why was he called “Scratch,” but for scarifying genius?
Therefore that dog set to work, in a manner highly praiseworthy (save, indeed, upon a flowerbed). First he wrought well with his fore–feet, using them at a trot only, until he had scooped out a little hole, about the size of a ratʼs nest. This he did in several places, and with sound assurance, but a purely illusory bonus. Presently he began in earnest, as if he had smelled a rat; he put out his tongue and pricked his ears, and worked away at full gallop, all four feet at once, in a fashion known only to terriers. Jem came through the hedge to see what it was, for the little dog gave short barks now and then, as if he were in a rabbit–hole, with the coney round the corner.
“Mun there, mun, lad; show whutt thee carnst do, boy.”
Thus encouraged, Scratch went on, emulative of self–burial, throwing the soft earth high in the air, and making a sort of laughing noise in the rapture of his glory.
After a while he sniffed hard in the hole, and then rested, and then again at it. The master also was beginning to share the little dogʼs excitement, for he had never seen Scratch dig so hard before, and his mind was wavering betwixt the hope of a pot of money, and the fear of finding the skeleton belonging to the ghost.