I had been standing by the door watching him all the time; and now he
just turned his head and looked at me over his shoulder as he rose and
took a little old battered tin plate from where it stuck beneath the
rough thatch, giving it a rub on the tail of his jacket.
"Like hedgehog?" he said grimly.
"No," I cried with a look of disgust.
"You ain't tasted it," he said, growing wonderfully conversational as he
took a hand-bill from a nail where it hung.
Then, kneeling down before the fire, he gave the hard clay ball a sharp
blow with the hand-bill, making it crack right across and fall open,
showing the little animal steaming hot and evidently done, the bristly
skin adhering to the clay shell that had just been broken, so that there
was no difficulty in turning it out upon the tin plate, the shell in two
halves being cast upon the fire, where the interior began to burn.
It seemed very horrible!
It seemed very nice!
I thought in opposite directions in the following moments, and all the
time my nose was being assailed by a very savoury odour, for the cookery
smelt very good.
"You won't have none--will you?" said Shock, without looking at me.
"No," I said shortly; "it isn't good to eat. You might as well eat
rats."
"I like rats," he replied, coolly taking out his knife from one pocket,
a piece of bread from the other; and to my horror he rapidly ate up the
hedgehog, throwing the bones on the fire as he picked them, and ending
by rubbing the tin plate over with a bit of old gardener's apron which
he took from the wall.
"Well," I said sarcastically, "was it nice?"
"Bewfle!" he said, giving his lips a smack and then sighing.
"Did you say you eat rats?" I continued.
"Yes."
"And mice too?"
"No; there ain't nuffin' on 'em--they're all bones."
"Do you eat anything else?"
"Snails."
"Yes, I've seen you eat the nasty slimy things."
"They ain't nasty slimy things; they're good."
"Do you eat anything else?"
"Birds."
"What?" I said.
"Birds--blackbirds, and thrushes, and sparrers, and starlings. Ketches
'em in traps like I do the rats."
"But do you really eat rats?"
"Yes--them as comes after the apples in the loft and after the corn.
They are good."
"But don't you get enough to eat at home?" I asked him.
"Home!--what, here?"
"No, I mean your home."
"What, where I sleeps? Sometimes."
"But you're not obliged to eat these things. Does Mr Brownsmith know?"
"Oh! yes, he knows. I like 'em. I eat frogs once. Ain't fish good? I
ketch 'em in the medders."
"Where you saved me when I was drowning?" I said hastily.