Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard by Eleanor Farjeon (best new books to read txt) 📕

portion," said Old Gillman to the milkmaids, "since there's no help for it. And good day to ye, and a better morrow."

"Wait a bit, master!" entreated Jennifer, "and tell me if Daisy, my Lincoln Red, lacks for anything."

"For nothing that Tom can help her to, maid. But she lacks you, and lacking you, her milk. So that being a cow she may be said to lack everything. And so do I, and the men, and the farm--ruin's our portion, nothing but rack and ruin."

Saying which he departed.

"To breakfast," said Martin cheerfully.

"Suppose you'd been seen," scolded Joscelyn.

"Then our tales would have been at an end," said Martin. "Would this have distressed you?"

"The sooner they're ended the better," said Joscelyn, "if you can do nothing but babble of sticky unicorns."

"It was fresh from the oven," explained Martin meekly. "I wish we could have gingerbread for breakfast instead of bread."

"Do not be sure," said Joscelyn severely, "that you will get even bread."

"I am in your hands," said Martin, "but please be kinder to the ducks."

Joscelyn, all of a fluster, then put new bread in the place of Gillian's old; but her annoyance was turned to pleasure when she discovered that the little round top of yesterday's loaf had entirely disappeared.

"Upon my word!" cried she, "the cure is taking effect."

"I believe you are right," said Martin. "How sorry the ducks will be."

They quickly fed the ducks, and then themselves; and Martin received his usual share, Joscelyn having so far relented that she even advised him as to the best tree for apples in the whole orchard.

After breakfast Martin found six pair of eyes fixed so earnestly upon him that he began to laugh.

"Why do you laugh?" asked little Joan.

"Because of my thoughts," said he. So she took a new penny from her pocket and gave it to him.

"I was thinking," said Martin, "how strange it is that girls are all so exactly alike."

"Oh!" cried six different voices in a single key of indignation.

"What a fib!" said Joyce. "I am like nobody but me."

"Nor am !" cried all the others in a breath.

"Yet a moment ago," said Martin, "you, Mistress Joyce, were wondering with all your might what diversion I had hit upon for this morning. And so were Jane and Jessica and Jennifer and Joan and Joscelyn."

"I was NOT!" cried six voices at once.

"What, none of you?" said Martin. "Did I not say so?"

And they were very provoked, not knowing what to answer for fear it might be on the tip of her neighbor's tongue. So they said nothing at all, and with one accord tossed their heads and turned their backs on him. And Martin laughed, leaving them to guess why. On which, greatly put out, every girl without even consulting one another they decided to have nothing further to do with him, and each girl went and sat under a different apple-tree and began to do her hair.

"Heigho!" said Martin. "Then this morning I must divert myself." And he began to spin his golden penny in the sun, sometimes spinning it very dexterously from his elbow and never letting it fall. But the girls wouldn't look, or if they did, it was through stray bits of their hair; when they could not be suspected of looking.

"I shall certainly lose this penny," communed Martin with himself, quite audibly, "if somebody does not lend me a purse to keep it in." But nobody offered him one, so he plucked a blade of Shepherd's Purse from the grass, soliloquizing, "Now had I been a shepherd, or had the shepherd's name been Martin, here was my purse to my hand. And then, having saved my riches I might have got married. Yet I never was a shepherd, nor ever knew a shepherd of my name; and a penny is in any case a great deal too much money for a man to marry on, be he a shepherd or no. For it is always best to marry on next-to-nothing, from which a penny is three times removed."

Then he went on spinning his penny in the air again, humming to himself a song of no value, which, so far as the girls could tell for the hair over their ears, went as follows:

If I should be so lucky As a farthing for to find. I wouldn't spend the farthing According to my mind, But I'd beat it and I'd bend it And I'd break it into two, And give one half to a Shepherd And the other half to you. And as for both your fortunes, I'd wish you nothing worse Than that YOUR half and HIS half Should lie in the Shepherd's Purse.

At the end of the song he spun the penny so high that it fell into the Well-House; and endeavoring to catch it he flung the spire of wild-flower after it, and so lost both. And nobody took the least notice of his song or his loss.

Then Martin said, "Who cares?" and took a new clay pipe and a little packet from his pocket; and he wandered about the orchard till he had found an old tin pannikin, and he scooped up some water from the duckpond and made a lather in it with the soap in the packet, and sat on the gate and blew bubbles. The first bubble in the pipe was always crystal, and sometimes had a jewel hanging from it which made it fall to the earth; and the second was tinged with color, and the third gleamed like sunset, or like peacocks' wings, or rainbows, or opals. All the colors of earth and heaven chased each other on their surfaces in all the swift and changing shapes that tobacco smoke plays at on the air; but of all their colors they take the deepest glow of one or two, and now Martin would blow a world of flame and orange through the trees, or one of blue and gold, or another of green and rose. And, as he might