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, muscular arms.

"Bad news that about Mrs. Lummis," he said, looking towards the cottage on
the other side of the road.