Page:The Life of the Fields, Jefferies, 1884.djvu/172

158 understand the verb to "flirk," which is nearly the same as to flick. "Pansherds" are "potsherds."

Here is a country recipe for discovering whether a lover is faithful or not. Take a laurel leaf, scratch his name on it, or the initials, and put it in the bosom of the dress. If it turns brown, he is true; if not, he'll deceive you. The character of a girl, according to the following couplets, is to be learned from the colour of her eyes:—

The interpretation is, that brown eyes indicate a gentle and dutiful disposition. Blue eyes show three guilty tendencies—to pick-a-pie, that is, to steal; to lie a-bed, that is, to be idle; and to tell a lie. As for grey eyes, their selfish greediness and ambition could not be contented with less than the whole world. No one but a woman could have composed this scandal on the sex. Sometimes the green lanes are crossed by gates, over which the trees in the hedges each side form a leafy arch. On the top bar of such a gate, rustic lovers often write love messages to their ladies, with a fragment of chalk. Unable from some cause or other to keep the appointed rendezvous, they leave a few explanatory words in conspicuous white letters, so that the gate answers the same purpose as the correspondence column in the daily papers. When a gate is not available, they thrust a stick in the ground near the footpath, split