Whereupon we both lamented our negligence in not rearing up a numerous progeny to help us in this day of need.And in such fashion we whiled away the time and talked for the edification of our neighbors.We quite won the sympathy of the pole-puller, a young country yokel, who now and again emptied a few picked blossoms into our bin, it being part of his business to gather up the stray clusters torn off in the process of pulling.
With him we discussed how much we could 'sub,' and were informed that while we were being paid a shilling for seven bushels, we could only 'sub,' or have advanced to us, a shilling for every twelve bushels.Which is to say that the pay for five out of every twelve bushels was withheld- a method of the grower to hold the hopper to his work whether the crop runs good or bad, and especially if it runs bad.
After all, it was pleasant sitting there in the bright sunshine, the golden pollen showering from our hands, the pungent, aromatic odor of the hops biting our nostrils, and the while remembering dimly the sounding cities whence these people came.Poor street people! Poor gutter folk! Even they grow earth-hungry, and yearn vaguely for the soil from which they have been driven, and for the free life in the open, and the wind and rain and sun all undefiled by city smirches.As the sea calls to the sailor, so calls the land to them; and, deep down in their aborted and decaying carcasses, they are stirred strangely by the peasant memories of their forebears who lived before cities were.And in incomprehensible ways they are made glad by the earth smells and sights and sounds which their blood has not forgotten though unremembered by them.
'No more 'ops, matey,' Bert complained.
It was five o'clock, and the pole-pullers had knocked off, so that everything could be cleaned up, there being no work on Sunday.For an hour we were forced idly to wait the coming of the measurers, our feet tingling with the frost which came on the heels of the setting sun.In the adjoining bin, two women and half a dozen children had picked nine bushels; so that the five bushels the measurers found in our bin demonstrated that we had done equally well, for the half-dozen children had ranged from nine to fourteen years of age.
Five bushels! We worked it out to eight pence ha'penny, or seventeen cents, for two men working three hours and a half.Eight and one-half cents apiece, a rate of two and three-sevenths cents per hour! But we were allowed only to 'sub' fivepence of the total sum, though the tally-keeper, short of change, gave us sixpence.Entreaty was in vain.A hard luck story could not move him.He proclaimed loudly that we had received a penny more than our due, and went his way.
Granting, for the sake of the argument, that we were what we represented ourselves to be, namely, poor men and broke, then here was our position: night was coming on; we had had no supper, much less dinner; and we possessed sixpence between us.I was hungry enough to eat three sixpenn'orths of food, and so was Bert.One thing was patent.By doing 16 2/3 per cent justice to our stomachs, we would expend the sixpence, and our stomachs would still be gnawing under 83 1/3 per cent injustice.Being broke again, we could sleep under a hedge, which was not so bad, though the cold would sap an undue portion of what we had eaten.But the morrow was Sunday, on which we could do no work, though our silly stomachs would not knock off on that account.Here, then, was the problem: how to get three meals on Sunday, and two on Monday (for we could not make another 'sub' till Monday evening).We knew that the casual wards were overcrowded; also, that if we begged from farmer or villager, there was a large likelihood of our going to jail for fourteen days.What was to be done? We looked at each other in despair-Not a bit of it.We joyfully thanked God that we were not as other men, especially hoppers, and went down the road to Maidstone, jingling in our pockets the half-crowns and florins we had brought from London.
