Part 47

‘Same way the pheasant come into Gubbs’s pocket—by a little luck an’ a deal o’ conjurin’.’ Old Hobden laughed in his deep chest.

‘I see you’ve not forgot your way about the woods. D’ye do any o’ this still?’ The stranger pretended to look along a gun.

Hobden answered with a quick movement of the hand as though he were pegging down a rabbit-wire.

‘No. That’s all that’s left me now. Age she must as Age she can. An’ what’s your news since all these years?’

‘Oh, I’ve bin to Plymouth, I’ve bin to Dover— I’ve bin ramblin’, boys, the wide world over,’

the man answered cheerily. ‘I reckon I know as much of Old England as most.’ He turned towards the children and winked boldly.

‘I lay they told you a sight o’ lies, then. I’ve been into England fur as Wiltsheer once. I was cheated proper over a pair of hedging-gloves,’ said Hobden.

‘There’s fancy-talkin’ everywhere. You’ve cleaved to your own parts pretty middlin’ close, Ralph.’

‘Can’t shift an old tree ’thout it dyin’,’ Hobden chuckled. ‘An’ I be no more anxious to die than you look to be to help me with my hops to-night.’

The great man leaned against the brickwork of the roundel, and swung his arms abroad. ‘Hire me!’ was all he said, and they stumped upstairs laughing.

The children heard their shovels rasp on the cloth where the yellow hops lie drying above the fires, and all the oast-house filled with the sweet, sleepy smell as they were turned.

‘Who is it?’ Una whispered to the Bee Boy.

‘Dunno, no more’n you—if you dunno,’ said he, and smiled.

The voices on the drying-floor talked and chuckled together, and the heavy footsteps went back and forth. Presently a hop-pocket dropped through the press-hole overhead, and stiffened and fattened as they shovelled it full. ‘Clank!’ went the press, and rammed the loose stuff into tight cake.

‘Gently!’ they heard Hobden cry. ‘You’ll bust her crop if you lay on so. You be as careless as Gleason’s bull, Tom. Come an’ sit by the fires. She’ll do now.’

They came down, and as Hobden opened the shutter to see if the potatoes were done Tom Shoesmith said to the children, ‘Put a plenty salt on ’em. That’ll show you the sort o’ man I be.’ Again he winked, and again the Bee Boy laughed and Una stared at Dan.

‘I know what sort o’ man you be,’ old Hobden grunted, groping for the potatoes round the fire.

‘Do ye?’ Tom went on behind his back. ‘Some of us can’t abide Horseshoes, or Church Bells, or Running Water; an’, talkin’ o’ runnin’ water’—he turned to Hobden, who was backing out of the roundel—‘d’you mind the great floods at Robertsbridge, when the miller’s man was drowned in the street?’

‘Middlin’ well.’ Old Hobden let himself down on the coals by the fire door. ‘I was courtin’ my woman on the Marsh that year. Carter to Mus’ Plum I was—gettin’ ten shillin’s week. Mine was a Marsh woman.’

‘Won’erful odd-gates place—Romney Marsh,’ said Tom Shoesmith. ‘I’ve heard say the world’s divided like into Europe, Ashy, Afriky, Ameriky, Australy, an’ Romney Marsh.’

‘The Marsh folk think so,’ said Hobden. ‘I had a hem o’ trouble to get my woman to leave it.’

‘Where did she come out of? I’ve forgot, Ralph.’

‘Dymchurch under the Wall,’ Hobden answered, a potato in his hand.

‘Then she’d be a Pett—or a Whitgift, would she?’

‘Whitgift.’ Hobden broke open the potato and ate it with the curious neatness of men who make most of their meals in the blowy open. ‘She growed to be quite reasonable-like after livin’ in the Weald awhile, but our first twenty year or two she was odd-fashioned, no bounds. And she was a won’erful hand with bees.’ He cut away a little piece of potato and threw it out to the door.

‘Ah! I’ve heard say the Whitgifts could see further through a millstone than most,’ said Shoesmith. ‘Did she, now?’

‘She was honest-innocent, of any nigromancin’,’ said Hobden. ‘Only she’d read signs and sinnifications out o’ birds flyin’, stars fallin’, bees hivin’, and such. An’ she’d lie awake—listenin’ for calls, she said.’

‘That don’t prove naught,’ said Tom. ‘All Marsh folk has been smugglers since time everlastin’. ’Twould be in her blood to listen out o’ nights.’