DOI Artikel:
Dowie, Ménie Muriel: My Note-Book in the Weald
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.25498#0046
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My Note-Book in the Weald
practice, at the same time I offered a perfectly adequate com-
ment.
“ They pay men eighteen shillings a week to keep the rabbits
down and yet if you was to ketch one in a snare an’ be found out
you’d ’ave six weeks.”
I tried to see myself, on the waiter’s suggestion, in this predica-
ment, and admitted in the full glow of sympathy that it did seem
hard.
“ An’ it is ’ard,” said the waiter with conviction. “You can’t
get a full-grown rabbit not under eighteenpence in the town, an’
I’d sooner ketch one myself”—he dropped his voice to a note of
rapture—“ I think they eat sweeter.”
It was impossible not to respond to the unquenchable human
nature in the waiter’s eye. After all, they weren’t my rabbits.
A venal warmth chequered the restraint of my smile. As the
irrigator directs the waterflow by a slight turn of his foot, I
directed, just so quietly, the conversation.
“Oh there is, Miss, a deal of poaching, to be sure. You see,
in the winter-time, a man may be out of work and he knows
where ’is two-and-nine is waitin’ for him when ’e’s wearin’ ’is
fur-lined overcoat, as the sayin’ goes. Yes, Miss; two-an’-nine’s
what they give for a hare—so I’ve been told.” Some day we may
have an actor capable of this delicate manipulation of the pause—
I know of none just now. “An’ then there’s them that does it
for the love of sport.”
I wanted some cheese, but I caught sight of the glow in the
oyster-eyes and I prayed that nothing might divert the waiter to
a sense of his duties at that moment. There is poetry in every
soul, we know; by long study I have learned to detect sometimes
the moment of the lighting of its fires. There was that in the
waiter’s kiln-brick face which a keen eye could recognise. So
looks
My Note-Book in the Weald
practice, at the same time I offered a perfectly adequate com-
ment.
“ They pay men eighteen shillings a week to keep the rabbits
down and yet if you was to ketch one in a snare an’ be found out
you’d ’ave six weeks.”
I tried to see myself, on the waiter’s suggestion, in this predica-
ment, and admitted in the full glow of sympathy that it did seem
hard.
“ An’ it is ’ard,” said the waiter with conviction. “You can’t
get a full-grown rabbit not under eighteenpence in the town, an’
I’d sooner ketch one myself”—he dropped his voice to a note of
rapture—“ I think they eat sweeter.”
It was impossible not to respond to the unquenchable human
nature in the waiter’s eye. After all, they weren’t my rabbits.
A venal warmth chequered the restraint of my smile. As the
irrigator directs the waterflow by a slight turn of his foot, I
directed, just so quietly, the conversation.
“Oh there is, Miss, a deal of poaching, to be sure. You see,
in the winter-time, a man may be out of work and he knows
where ’is two-and-nine is waitin’ for him when ’e’s wearin’ ’is
fur-lined overcoat, as the sayin’ goes. Yes, Miss; two-an’-nine’s
what they give for a hare—so I’ve been told.” Some day we may
have an actor capable of this delicate manipulation of the pause—
I know of none just now. “An’ then there’s them that does it
for the love of sport.”
I wanted some cheese, but I caught sight of the glow in the
oyster-eyes and I prayed that nothing might divert the waiter to
a sense of his duties at that moment. There is poetry in every
soul, we know; by long study I have learned to detect sometimes
the moment of the lighting of its fires. There was that in the
waiter’s kiln-brick face which a keen eye could recognise. So
looks