About a quarter past six he went back home, and met his neighbour
Noah.
"Hullo!" says Noah. "What? You bin at work?"
"Ah, and so you ought to ha' bin."
But Noah, who has lived in London, "sits up till eleven or twelve at
night readin' the paper. He can't git into the habit of gettin' up
early."
Gardening talk is now the staple conversation in the village, and the
public-house is the club-room where the discussions take place, the
times being Saturday night and Sunday.
"You don't find many there any other time," says Bettesworth.
"Cert'nly, after a man bin to work all day, when he gits home he's
tired, and wants to go to bed. But Saturday night and Sunday--well,
you can't bide indoors solitary, lookin' at the fire. If you do, you
never learns nothin'. But to go and have a glass and a pipe where
there's others--that sims to enlighten your mind."
The men compare notes, and give and take sage advice. "Where I had
that crop o' dwarf peas last year I be goin' to have carrots this,"
says one. Another answers, "Well, then, if I was you, I should dig
that ground up now--rake off the stones" (carrots being "a very tender
herbage"). "Then, if it comes rain, that'll settle it a bit. After
that, let it bide an' settle for about another fortnight, and then as
soon as you gets a shower shove 'em in as fast as you mind."
"Or else," Bettesworth explains in telling me this, "if you don't let
it settle the drill sows 'em too deep; it sinks in. Carrots is a thing
you wants to sow as shallow as ever you can."
Somebody informs the company that he had "quarter of a acre o' carrots
last year, and he made five pound of 'em." Or was it that he had five
tons, and sold them for thirty shillings a ton? This was it, as
Bettesworth at last remembers.
"I 'spose you'll soon be puttin' in some taters, Fred?"
"I got most o' mine in a'ready."
"_Have_ ye? I en't sowed none yet, but...."
So says Tom Durrant, the landlord.
"But cert'nly," as Bettesworth observes, "down there where he is it do
take the frost so--right over there in Moorway's Bottom. Up here,
though, we no call to wait. I likes to git taters in. You see, where
they lays about they spears so, and then the spears gits knocked
off--you _can't_ help it; or, if not, still, where you sees a tater
speared so, that must weaken that tater? About two foot two one way
and fifteen inches t'other--that's the distance I gen'ly plants
taters. Ten't no good leavin' 'em wider 'tween the rows. But old Steve
Blackman, up there by the Forest, I knowed he once plant some three
foot both ways. And law, what a crop he did git! 'Twas a piece o'
ground his landlord let 'n have for the breakin' of it up. And he
trenched in a lot o' fuzz--old fuzz-bushes as high as you be--and so
on. Everything went in. And such a crop o' taters as he had--no, no
dressin'. Only this old fuzz-stuff. _Regents_, they was. Oh, that was
a splendid tater, too! But you never hears of 'em now. They sims to be
reg'lar gone out. I got some o' these here _Dunbars_, down here. I
should like to see half a bushel o' they in this bit o' ground o'
yourn. Splendid croppin' tater they be. I ast Tom Durrant if he could
spare you half a bushel. He said he didn't hardly know. There's so
many bin after 'em--purty near half the parish. They be a splendid
croppin' tater, no mistake. He got 'em of some gentleman's gardener to
begin with, I reckon. Reg'lar one he is, you know, for gettin' taters
an' things, and markin' 'em and keepin' the sorts separate. He had
four to start with, an' they produced a peck. Then he got three bushel
out o' that peck. And last year he sowed 'em again--three bushel--and
he got thirty-nine bushel."