Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/158

 hotel, and I don't want to sit waiting at the station with everyone staring at me and all."

"Now, look here, why do you want to go to the city? Cities is no good. They're bad for your 'ealth and bad for your moralities. You're too good-looking, that's the trouble. Now the country's the place for 'andsome girls all over the world, and I've seen 'em all over the world." He struck an heroic attitude in the middle of the road. "I've seen 'em in the Andes with black hair to their knees that a man might choke himself in. I've seen 'em in China with their lovely little eyes like two hot coals. I've seen 'em in Australiar with sunburnt cheeks you'd like to take a bite out of; and let me tell you it's always in the country that you sees 'em at their best."

"I'm going home to England, if ever I can get there."

"Well, old England's not so bad. Never shall I forget the first time I sailed into Plymouth early one Sunday morning. An old tar with me grabbed me by the arm and says— 'There's a pictur' for you, lad,' and a pictur' it was to make you sing with joy."

"But whatever shall I do? I've missed my train, and there's the sun coming up. It's day."

"Now, I'll tell you what. You get into my cart with me and I'll take you somewheres where you can get work. I've a load of fish here I must deliver in Northwood by eight. That's back through the quarry road, past Stebbing where they raise brook trout. Old man Heaslip lives out that way, a well-off old cadger but a little close. He has a farm and a good bit of fruit but the drought made his Indian pickers leave him, and now this grand rainfall will make the thimbleberries fit to burst with juice, and nobody to pick 'em."

"Me to pick fruit? I don't know how."

"Not know how to pick a berry? Come, now, that's