I could almost have fancied that there was some truth in Ike's
declaration about old Basket or Bonyparty, as he called him, for
certainly he seemed to quicken his pace as we drew nearer; and so it was
that, as we turned into the busy market, and the horse made its way to
one particular spot at the south-east corner, Ike triumphantly pointed
to the church clock we had just passed.
"What did I tell yer?" he exclaimed with a grim smile of satisfaction on
his countenance; "he picked up them lost ten minutes, and here we are--
just four."
What a scene it seemed to me. The whole place packed with laden cart,
wagon, and light van. Noise, confusion, and shouting, pleasant smells
and evil smells--flowers and crushed cabbage; here it was peas and mint,
there it was strawberries; then a whole wagon announced through the
sides of its piled-up baskets that the load was cauliflowers.
For a time I could do nothing but gape and stare around at the bustling
crowd and the number of men busily carrying great baskets on the top of
porters' knots. Women, too, in caps, ready to put the same great pad
round forehead and make it rest upon their shoulders, and bear off great
boxes of fruit or baskets of vegetable.
Here I saw a complete stack of bushel baskets being regularly built up
from the unloading of a wagon, to know by the scent they were early
peas; a little farther on, some men seemed to be making a bastion for
the defence of the market by means of gabions, which, to add to the
fancy, were not filled with sand, but with large round gravel of a pale
whitish-yellow, only a closer inspection showed that the contents were
new potatoes.
The strawberries took my attention, though, most, for I felt quite a
feeling of sorrow for Old Brownsmith as I saw what seemed to me to be
such a glut of the rich red fruit that I was sure those which we had
brought up would not sell.
How delicious they smelt in the old-fashioned pottles which we never see
now--long narrow cones, with a cross-handle, over which, when filled, or
supposed to be filled, for a big strawberry would block up the narrow
part of the cone at times, a few leaves were placed, and then a piece of
white paper was tied over with a bit of bast. Nowadays deep and shallow
punnets are the order of the day, and a good thing too.
Flowers! There seemed to me enough to last London for a month; and I
was going, after a look round, to tell Ike that I was afraid we should
have to take our load back, when I felt a heavy thump on the back of my
head, which knocked off my cap.
Nothing annoyed me more as a boy than for my cap to be knocked off.
Shock knew that, and it had been one of his favourite tricks, so that I
knew, as I thought, whence this piece of annoyance had come, and,
picking up the small hard cabbage that had been thrown, I determined to
avenge myself by sending it back with a good aim.
True enough there was Master Shock, lying flat on his chest with his
chin resting in his hands, and his feet kicking up behind, now going up
and down, now patting together, for he had taken off his boots.
Shock was having a good stare over the market from his elevated position
on the top of the baskets; and, taking a good aim as I thought, I threw
the little hard stale cabbage, and then dodged round the side of the
cart. I stood aghast directly after, beside a pile of baskets, and
watch a quarrel that had just begun a dozen yards away, where a big
red-faced man was holding a very fluffy white hat in his hand and
brushing it with his arm, and bandying angry words with a rough-looking
young market porter, who, with a great flat basket under one arm and his
other through a knot, was speaking menacingly--
"Don't you hit me again."
"Yes, I will, and knock your ugly head off if you do that again," said
the man with the white hat.
"Do what again?"
"Do what again!--why, throw rotten cabbages at my hat."
"I didn't."
"Yes, you did."
"No, I didn't."
"Why, half-a-dozen here saw you do it. You've got hold of the wrong
man, my lad, for larks; so now, then!"
I saw him stick on his white hat all on one side, and he looked very
fierce and severe; while I felt covered with shame and confusion, for I
knew that it was my cabbage that had done the mischief.
_Whop_!
That was another right in my ear, and I turned angrily upon Shock,
forgetting all about the man with the white hat and the half-conceived
idea of going up to him and telling the truth. But there was Shock
staring about him from a dozen feet above my head, and singing softly,
"I've been to Paris and I've been to Dover;" and the cabbage had struck
me on the other side, so that unless Shock had learned how to project
decayed cabbage after the fashion of boomerangs it could not have been
he.
There was a group of bare-legged boys, though, away to my left--a set of
ragged objects who might have passed for Shock's brothers and cousins,
only that they were thin and unwholesomely pale, and extremely dirty,
while although Shock was often quite as dirty, his seemed to be the
wholesome dirt of country earth, and he looked brown, and healthy, and
strong.
Then I became aware of the presence of Ike, who said with a grim smile:
"Don't you heed them, my lad. I see one of 'em chuck it and then turn
round. Wait a bit and I shall get a charnce, and I'll drar my whip
round one of 'em in a way as'll be a startler."
A quick busy-looking man came bustling up just then, had a chat with
Ike, and hurried off, carrying away my companion; and as soon as he had
gone a bruised potato struck the side of the cart, and as I changed my
position a damaged stump of a cauliflower struck Basket on the flank,
making him start and give himself a shake that rattled all the chains of
the harness before resettling down to the task of picking the corn out
of the chaff in his well-filled nose-bag.
My first idea was to call Shock down from where he was see-sawing his
legs to and fro till his feet looked like two tilt-hammers beating a
piece of iron, and then with his help attack the young vagabonds who
were amusing themselves by making me a target for all the market refuse
they could find.
Second thoughts are said to be best, and I had sense enough to know that
nothing would be gained by a struggle with the young roughs. So,
gaining knowledge from my previous experience, I changed my position so
as to get in the front of some sturdy-looking men who were all standing
with their hands in their pockets chinking their money. I had yet to
learn that they were costermongers waiting for prices to come down.
Directly after _whiz_! came something close by my head and struck one of
the men in the face, with the result that he made a dash at the boys,
who darted away in and out among the baskets, whooping and yelling
defiance; but one ran right into the arms of a man in uniform, who gave
him three or four sharp cuts with a cane and sent him howling away.
This episode was hardly over before Ike was back, and he nodded as he
said:
"He's coming direckly to sell us off."
"Shall you be able to sell the things, then, this morning?"
"Sell 'em! I should just think we shall; well too. There's precious
little in the market to-day."
"Little!" I exclaimed. "Why, I thought there would be too much for
ours to be wanted."
"Bless your young innocence! this is nothing. Bad times for the
costers, my boy; they'll get nothing cheap. Here you, Shock, as you are
come, help with these here ropes; and mind, you two, you look after
these new ropes and the sacks."
"Look after them!" I said innocently.
"Yes," said Ike with a queer look; "they gets wild and into bad habits
in London--walks away, they does--and when you go and look for 'em,
there you finds 'em in marine store-shops in the dirty alleys."
Shock and I set to work helping to unfasten the ropes, which were laced
in and out of the basket-handles, and through the iron stays, and
beneath the hooks placed on purpose about the cart, after which the
ropes were made into neat bunches by Ike, who passed them from hand to
elbow over and over and tied them in the middle, and then in a row to
the ladder of the cart.
The baskets were just set free when the busy-looking man came back along
with a tall red-nosed fellow. I noticed his red nose because it was the
same colour as a book he held, whose leather cover was like a bad
strawberry. He had a little ink-bottle hanging at his buttonhole and a
pen in his mouth, and was followed by quite a crowd of keen-looking men.
"Now, Jacob," said the little man, and clapping his hand upon the thin
man's shoulder he stepped up on to the top of a pile of barge-baskets,
whose lids were tied down with tarred string over the cauliflowers with
which they were gorged.
Then, as I stared at him, he put his hands on either side of his mouth
and seemed to go mad with satisfaction, dancing his body up and down and
slowly turning round as he yelled out:
"Strawby's! strawby's! strawby's!" over and over again.
I looked up at Ike, whose face was as if cut out of mahogany, it was so
solid; then I looked round at the people, but there wasn't a smile.
Nobody laughed but Shock, who grinned silently till he saw me watching
him, and then he looked sulky and turned his back.
Just then Ike, who seemed as solemn as a judge, climbed up the wheel and
on to the cart with another man following him; and as the crowd
increased about our cart I realised that everything was being sold by
auction, for the busy man kept shouting prices quickly higher and
higher, and then giving a tap with a pencil on a basket, entering
something in a memorandum-book, while his red-nosed clerk did the same.
I stared to see how quickly it was all done, Ike and the strange man
handing down the baskets, which were seized and carried away by porters
to carts standing at a distance; and I wondered how they would ever find
out afterwards who had taken them, and get the money paid.
But Ike seemed to be quite satisfied as he trampled about over the
baskets, which were handed rapidly down till from being high up he was
getting low down, before the busy-looking man began to shout what
sounded to me like, "Flow--wow--wow--wow!" as if he were trying to
imitate barking like a dog.
Half the crowd went away now, but a fresh lot of men came up, and first
of all baskets full of flowers were sold, then half-baskets, then so
many bunches, as fast as could be.
Again I found myself wondering how the money would be obtained, and I
thought that Old Brownsmith would be sure to be cheated; but Ike looked
quite easy, and instead of there being so many things in the market that
ours would not sell, I found that the men around bought them up eagerly,
and the baskets grew less in number than ever.
I glanced round once or twice on that busy summer morning, to see the
street as far as I could grasp packed with carts, and to these a regular
throng of men were carrying baskets, while every here and there barrows
were being piled up with flowers.
All about us too, as far as I could see by climbing up to the ladder
over Basket's back, men were shouting away as they sold the contents of
other carts, whose baskets were being handed down to the hungry crowds,
who were pushing and struggling and making way for the porters with the
heavy baskets on their heads.
By degrees I began to understand that all this enormous quantity of
garden produce was being bought up by the greengrocers and
barrow-dealers from all over London, and that they would soon be driving
off east, west, north, and south, to their shops and places of business.
I should have liked to sit perched up there and watching all that went
on, but I had to move to let Ike drag back the baskets; then I had to
help handing out bunches, till at last the crowd melted away, and the
busy man closed his book with a snap.
"Very good this morning," he shouted to Ike; and then climbing down he
went off with his red-nosed clerk, and the people who were about
followed him.
"Getting warm, mate?" said Ike, grinning at me.
"Yes," I said; "the sun's so hot, and there's no wind here."
"No, my lad; they builds houses to shut it out. Soon be done now. You
and Shock get down and hand up them baskets."
He pointed to a pile that some men had been making, and these I found
all had "Brownsmith, Isleworth," painted upon them, and it dawned upon
me now that those which had been carried away would not be returned till
next journey.
"That's it," said Ike. "Market-gardeners has to give a lot o' trust
that way."
"But do they get the baskets all back again, Ike?" I said.
"To be sure they do, my lad--Oh yes, pretty well."
"But shall we get paid the money for all that's been sold this morning?"
"Why, of course, my lad. That gentleman as sold for us, he's our
salesman; and he pays for it all, and they pay him. Don't you see?"