"Ah, yes," he said, as he drove in his spade. "You're a gent, you see,
and I'm only a workman."
"I'm going to be a workman too, Ike," I said.
"Ay, but not a digger like me. They don't set me to prune, and thin
grapes, and mind chyce flowers. I'm not like you."
"It does not matter what any one is, Ike," I said. "You ought to turn
over a new leaf and keep away from the public-house."
"True," he said, smashing a clod; "and I do turn over a noo leaf, but it
will turn itself back."
"Nonsense!" I said. "You are sharp enough on Shock's failings, and you
tell me of mine. Why don't you attend to your own?"
"Look here, young gent," he cried sharply, "do you want to quarrel just
because I like a drop now and then?"
"Quarrel! No, Ike. I tell you because I don't want to see you
discharged."
"Think they would start me if they knowed, lad?"
"I'm sure of it," I said earnestly. "Sir Francis is so particular."
"Then," he said, scraping his spade fiercely, "it won't do. I want to
stop here. I'll turn over a noo leaf."
One day in the next autumn, as I was carefully shutting in a pill-box a
moth that I had found, a gentleman who was staying at the house caught
sight of me and asked to see it.
"Ah, yes!" he said. "Goat-moth, and a nice specimen. Do you sugar?"
"Do I sugar, sir?" I said vacantly. "Yes, I like sugar, sir."
"Bless the lad!" he said, laughing. "I mean sugar the trees. Smear
them with thick sugar and water or treacle, and then go round at night
with a lantern; that's the way to catch the best moths."
I was delighted with the idea and was not long before I tried it, and as
luck would have it, there was an old bull's-eye lantern in the
tool-house that Mr Solomon used when he went round to the furnaces of a
night.
I remember well one evening, just at leaving-off time, taking my bottle
of thick syrup and brush from the tool-house shelf, and slipping down
the garden and into the pear-plantation where the choice late fruit was
waiting and asking daily to be picked.
Mr Solomon was very proud of his pears, and certainly some of them grew
to a magnificent size.
I was noticing how beautiful and tawny and golden some of them were
growing to be as I smeared the trunk of one and then of another with my
sweet stuff, and as it was a deliciously warm still evening, I was full
of expectation of a good take.
I had just finished when all at once I heard a curious noise, which made
me think of lying in the dark in the sand-cave listening to Shock's hard
breathing; and I gave quite a shudder as I looked round, and then turned
hot and angry.