“You don’t say so, Mrs. Smith!”
“John digs round the roots, you know. In goes his blundering spade, through roots, bulbs, everything that hasn’t got a good show above ground, turning ’em up cut all to slices. Only the very last fall I went to move some tulips, when I found every bulb upside down, and the stems crooked round. He had turned ’em over in the spring, and the cunning creatures had soon found that heaven was not where it used to be.”
“What’s that long-favoured flower under the hedge?”
“They? O Lord, they are the horrid Jacob’s ladders! Instead of praising ’em, I be mad wi’ ’em for being so ready to bide where they are not wanted. They be very well in their way, but I do not care for things that neglect won’t kill. Do what I will, dig, drag, scrap, pull, I get too many of ’em. I chop the roots: up they’ll come, treble strong. Throw ’em over hedge; there they’ll grow, staring me in the face like a hungry dog driven away, and creep back again in a week or two the same as before. ’Tis Jacob’s ladder here, Jacob’s ladder there, and plant ’em where nothing in the world will grow, you get crowds of ’em in a month or two. John made a new manure mixen last summer, and he said, ‘Maria, now if you’ve got any flowers or such like, that you don’t want, you may plant ’em round my mixen so as to hide it a bit, though ’tis not likely anything of much value will grow there.’ I thought, ‘There’s them Jacob’s ladders; I’ll put them there, since they can’t do harm in such a place;’ and I planted the Jacob’s ladders sure enough. They growed, and they growed, in the mixen and out of the mixen, all over the litter, covering it quite up. When John wanted to use it about the garden, ’a said, ‘Nation seize them Jacob’s ladders of yours, Maria! They’ve eat the goodness out of every morsel of my manure, so that ’tis no better than sand itself!’ Sure enough the hungry mortals had. ’Tis my belief that in the secret souls o’ ’em, Jacob’s ladders be weeds, and not flowers at all, if the truth was known.”
Robert Lickpan, pig-killer and carrier, arrived at this moment. The fatted animal hanging in the back kitchen was cleft down the middle of its backbone, Mrs. Smith being meanwhile engaged in cooking supper.
Between the cutting and chopping, ale was handed round, and Worm and the pig-killer listened to John Smith’s description of the meeting with Stephen, with eyes blankly fixed upon the table-cloth, in order that nothing in the external world should interrupt their efforts to conjure up the scene correctly.
Stephen came downstairs in the middle of the story, and after the little interruption occasioned by his entrance and welcome, the narrative was again continued, precisely as if he had not been there at all, and was told inclusively to him, as to somebody who knew nothing about the matter.
“‘Ay,’ I said, as I catched sight o’ en through the brimbles, ‘that’s the lad, for I d’ know en by his grand-father’s walk;’ for ’a stapped out like poor father for all the world. Still there was a touch o’ the frisky that set me wondering. ’A got closer, and I said, ‘That’s the lad, for I d’ know en by his carrying a black case like a travelling man.’ Still, a road is common to all the world, and there be more travelling men than one. But I kept my eye cocked, and I said to Martin, ‘’Tis the boy, now, for I d’ know en by the wold twirl o’ the stick and the family step.’ Then ’a come closer, and a’ said, ‘All right.’ I could swear to en then.”
Stephen’s personal appearance was next criticised.
“He d’ look a deal thinner in face, surely, than when I seed en at the parson’s, and never knowed en, if ye’ll believe me,” said Martin.