have become the substitute for every term of
execration, even with mild David the labourer. He came into the orchard
last evening staggering under a 15-ft. ladder. We had decided that if we
were going to have the pears before the wasps had spoiled them we must pick
them at once.

"It's a wunnerful crop," said David. "I've knowed this pear-tree [looking
up at one of them from the foot of his ladder] for twenty-five year, and
I've never seen such a crop on it afore."

Then he mounted the ladder and began to pick the fruit.

"Well, I'm blowed," he said, "if they ain't been at 'em a'ready." And he
flung down pear after pear scooped out by the wasps close to the stalk.
"Reg'lar Germans--that's what they are," he said. "Look at 'em round that
hive," he went on. "They'll hev all the honey and them bees will starve and
git the Isle o' Wight--that's what they'll git.... Lor," he added,
reflectively, "I dunno what wospses are made for--wospses _and_ Germans. It
gits over me."

I said it got over me too. And then from among the branches, while I hung
on to the foot of the ladder to keep it firm, David unbosomed his disquiet
to me about enlisting.

"Most o' the chaps round here has gone," he said, "an' I don't like staying
be'ind. Seems as though you were hanging back like. 'Taint that I shouldn't
like to go; but it's this way ... (Hullo, I got my hand on a wasp that
time) ... There's such a lot o' women-folk dependent on me. There's my wife
and there's my mother down the village _and_ my aunt; and not a man to do
anything for 'em but me. After my work on th' farm, I keeps all three
gardens going and a patch of allotment down the valley as well."

"You're growing a lot of good food, and that's military work," I said.

He seemed cheered by the idea, and asked me if I'd like to see the potatoes
he had dug up that evening--they were "a wunnerful fine lot," he said.

So after he had stripped the pear-tree he shouldered the ladder, and we
went down the village to David's garden. There I saw his potatoes, some
lying to dry where they had been dug up, others in sacks. Also his marrows
and beans and cabbages and lettuces. A little apologetically, he offered me
some of the largest potatoes--"just as a hobby," he said, meaning thereby
that it was only a trifle he offered.

As I went away in the gathering dark, with my hands full of potatoes, I met
the landlord of the Blue Boar, his shirt sleeves rolled up as usual above
his brown, m