第19章

"I am looking for German prisoners, Joe; if you see a farmer, you might stop.""Any sort of farmer?" asked Joe.

"Is there more than one sort?" returned Mr.Lavender, smiling.

Joe cocked his eye."Ain't you never lived in the country, sir?""Not for more than a few weeks at a time, Joe, unless Rochester counts.

Of course, I know Eastbourne very well."

"I know Eastbourne from the inside," said Joe discursively."I was a waiter there once.""An interesting life, a waiter's, Joe, I should think.""Ah! Everything comes to 'im who waits, they say.But abaht farmers--you've got a lot to learn, sir."

"I am always conscious of that, Joe; the ramifications of public life are innumerable.""I could give you some rummikins abaht farmers.I once travelled in breeches.""You seem to have done a great many things Joe.""That's right, sir.I've been a sailor, a 'traveller,' a waiter, a scene-shifter, and a shover, and I don't know which was the cushiest job.

But, talking of farmers: there's the old English type that wears Bedfords--don't you go near 'im, 'e bites.There's the modern scientific farmer, but it'll take us a week to find 'im.And there's the small-'older, wearin' trahsers, likely as not; I don't think 'e'd be any use to you.

"What am I to do then?" asked Mr Lavender.

"Ah!" said Joe, 'ave lunch."

Mr.Lavender sighed, his hunger quarelling with his sense of duty."Ishould like to have found a farmer first," he said.

"Well, sir, I'll drive up to that clump o'beeches, and you can have a look round for one while I get lunch ready.

"That will do admirably."

There's just one thing, sir," said Joe, when his master was about to start; "don't you take any house you come across for a farm.They're mostly cottages o' gentility nowadays, in'abited by lunatics.""I shall be very careful," said Mr.Lavender.

"This glorious land!" he thought, walking away from the beech clump, with Blink at his heels; "how wonderful to see it being restored to its former fertility under pressure of the war! The farmer must be a happy man, indeed, working so nobly for his country, without thought of his own prosperity.How flowery those beans look already!" he mused, glancing at a field of potatoes."Now that I am here I shall be able to combine my work on German prisoners with an effort to stimulate food production.

Blink!" For Blink was lingering in a gateway.Moving back to her, Mr.

Lavender saw that the sagacious animal was staring through the gate at a farmer who was standing in a field perfectly still, with his back turned, about thirty yards away.

"Have you----" Mr.Lavender began eagerly; "is it--are you employing any German prisoners, sir?"The farmer did not seem to hear."He must," thought Mr.Lavender, "be of the old stolid English variety."The farmer, who was indeed attired in a bowler hat and Bedford cords, continued to gaze over his land, unconscious of Mr.Lavender's presence.

"I am asking you a question, sir," resumed the latter in a louder voice."And however patriotically absorbed you may be in cultivating your soil, there is no necessity for rudeness."The farmer did not move a muscle.