“Putting it in plain English, I’m going to wrestle with half a loaf of bread and two slices of cold ham. Will you join me? Do.” The invitation was made eagerly. “Stay here and let me hear you laugh. It does me more good than a whole side of streaky bacon.”
Pippard scratched his head doubtfully. “Well, Ah told th’ old ’ooman as ’ow Ah’d be wome for dinner,” he said.
“The old woman must not be disappointed. Do you pass a pub on your way home?”
“Can’t go anywhere from ’ere without passin’ a poob.”
Danby squeezed a shilling into the great sun-tanned fist.
“Well, call in and get a drink.”
“Thankee, Ah doan’t mind if Ah do.”
“Drink to my health. I don’t suppose you want a drink more than I want health.” He walked round the farm-labourer admiringly. He looked like a smooth-haired terrier who had suddenly met a St. Bernard. “My word, I’d give something to be a man like you. What muscle, what bones, what a back! What a hand! It’s as big as a leg of mutton. Do you ever get tired of being healthy? Do you ever wake up in the morning and say: ‘O Lord, I’m still as strong as an ox—why can’t I get a nice thumping headache to keep me in bed?’”
It was altogether too much for the man who rose with the sun and went to bed with the sun and worked out in the fields all day long; the big, simple, healthy, natural man, whose life was a series of seasons, to whom there was no tragedy except bad weather, and a lack of work and wages. This odd little creature, who said unexpected things as though he meant them, and asked funny questions seriously, was “a comic”—such a man as the clown who came with the circus twice a year, and played the fool in the big tent which was pitched on the green and lighted with flares of gas. Pippard laughed so loudly that he scared the eager sparrows.
“There you go,” he said. “Ah reckon as ’ow you was born funny.”