III
“Forty-folds,” went on the master, “be the best keeping potatoes. Thur be so many new sorts now, but they bean’t no good; they be very good for gentlefolk as doan’t know no better, and poor folk as can’t help theirselves. They won’t grow everywhere neither; there bean’t but one patch in our garden as ull grow ’um well. It’s that’s big middle patch. Summat different in the soil thur. There’s a lot, bless you! to be learned before you can grow a potato, for all it looks such a simple thing. Farty-folds—”
“Farty-folds!” said Mrs. Iden, imitating his provincial pronunciation with extreme disgust in her tone.
“Aw, yes, too,” said Iden. “Varty-volds be ould potatoes, and thur bean’t none as can beat um.”
The more she showed her irritation at his speech or ways, the more he accentuated both language and manner.
“Talking with your mouth full,” said Mrs. Iden. It was true, Iden did talk with his mouth full, very full indeed, for he fed heartily. The remark annoyed him; he grunted and spluttered and choked a little—floury things are choky. He got it down by taking a long draught at his quart of strong ale. Splendid ale it was, too, the stuff to induce you to make faces at Goliath. He soon began to talk again.
“Th’ ould shepherd fetched me these swede greens; I axed un three days ago; I know’d we was going to have this yer mutton. You got to settle these yer things aforehand.”
“Axed,” muttered Mrs. Iden.
“Th’ pigeons have been at um, they be ’mazing fond of um, so be the larks. These be the best as thur was. They be the best things in the world for the blood. Swede greens be the top of all physic. If you can get fresh swede tops you don’t want a doctor within twenty miles. Their’s nothing in all the chemists’ shops in England equal to swede greens”—helping himself to a large quantity of salt.
“What a lot of salt you do eat!” muttered Mrs. Iden.
“Onely you must have the real swedes—not thuck stuff they sells in towns; greens they was once p’rhaps, but they be tough as leather, and haven’t got a drop of sap in um. Swedes is onely to be got about March.”
“Pooh! you can get them at Christmas in London,” said Mrs. Iden.
“Aw, can ’ee? Call they swede tops? They bean’t no good; you might as well eat dried leaves. I tell you these are the young fresh green shoots of spring”—suddenly changing his pronunciation as he became interested in his subject and forgot the shafts of irritation shot at him by his wife. “They are full of sap—fresh sap—the juice which the plant extracts from the earth as the active power of the sun’s rays increases. It is this sap which is so good for the blood. Without it the vegetable is no more than a woody fibre. Why the sap should be so powerful I cannot tell you; no one knows, any more than they know how the plant prepares it. This is one of those things which defy analysis—the laboratory is at fault, and can do nothing with it.” (“More salt!” muttered Mrs. Iden. “How can you eat such a quantity of salt?”) “There is something beyond what the laboratory can lay hands on; something that cannot be weighed, or seen, or estimated, neither by quantity, quality, or by any means. They analyse champagne, for instance; they find so many parts water, so much sugar, so much this, and so much that; but out of the hundred parts there remain ten—I think it is ten—at all events so many parts still to be accounted for. They escape, they are set down as volatile—the laboratory has not even a distinct name for this component; the laboratory knows nothing at all about it, cannot even name it. But this unknown constituent is the real champagne. So it is with the sap. In spring the sap possesses a certain virtue; at other times of the year the leaf is still green, but useless to us.”
“I shall have some vinegar,” said Mrs. Iden, defiantly, stretching out her hand to the cruet.
Mr. Iden made a wry face, as if the mere mention of vinegar had set his teeth on edge. He looked the other way and ate as fast as he could, to close his eyes to the spectacle of anyone spoiling the sappy swede greens with nauseous vinegar. To his system of edible philosophy vinegar was utterly antagonistic—destructive of the sap-principle, altogether wrong, and, in fact, wicked, as destroying good and precious food.
Amaryllis would not have dared to have taken the vinegar herself, but as her mother passed the cruet to her, she, too, fell away, and mixed vinegar with the green vegetables. All women like vinegar.
When the bottle was restored to the cruet-stand Mr. Iden deigned to look round again at the table.
“Ha! you’ll cut your thumb!” he shouted to Amaryllis, who was cutting a piece of bread. She put the loaf down with a consciousness of guilt. “Haven’t I told you how to cut bread twenty times? Cutting towards your thumb like that! Hold your left hand lower down, so that if the knife slips it will go over. Here, like this. Give it to me.”
He cut a slice to show her, and then tossed the slice across the table so accurately that it fell exactly into its proper place by her plate. He had a habit of tossing things in that way.
“Why ever couldn’t you pass it on the tray?” said Mrs. Iden. “Flinging in that manner! I hate to see it.”
Amaryllis, as in duty bound, in appearance took the lesson in bread-cutting to heart, as she had done twenty times before. But she knew she should still cut a loaf in the same dangerous style when out of his sight. She could not do it in the safe way—it was so
