"Not a bit. Pray go on, and I can talk to you. Seems too bad for me to be doing nothing, and you breaking your back." "Oh, it won't break my back; _I'm_ used to it. Well, how do you like King's Castor?" "Very much. The place is old and quaint, and I like the country. The people are a little distant at present. They are not all so sociable as you are." "Ah, they don't know you yet. There: that's done. Now I'm going to stick those peas." He thrust the dibber into the earth, kicked the soil off his heavy boots, and came out on to the path rubbing his hands and looking at them. "Shake hands with you another time." "To be sure. Going to stick those peas, are you?" "Yes. I've the sticks all ready." The old man went to the top of the path, and into a nook where, already sharpened, were about a dozen bundles of clean-looking ground-birch sticks full of twigs for the pea tendrils to hold on by as they climbed. The old fellow smiled genially, and there was something very pleasant in his clear blue eyes, florid face, and thick grey beard, which--a peculiarity in those days--he wore cut rather short, but innocent of razor. "Shall I carry a bundle or two down?" said the curate. "If you like." The Reverend Christie Bayle did like, and he carried a couple of bundles down to where the peas were waiting their support. And then--they neither of them knew how it happened, only that a question arose as to whether it was better to put in pea-sticks perpendicular or diagonal, the old man being in favour of the upright, the curate of the slope-- both began sticking a row, with the result that, before a quarter of a row was done, the curate had taken off his black coat, hung it upon the gnarled Ripston-pippin-tree, rolled up his shirt sleeves over a pair of white, muscular arms, and quite a race ensued. Four rows had been stuck, and a barrow had been fetched and a couple of spades, for the digging and preparing of a patch for some turnips, when, spade in hand, the curate paused and wiped his forehead. "You seem to like gardening, parson." "I do," was the reply. "I quite revel in the smell of the newly turned earth on a morning like this, only it makes me so terribly hungry." "Ah, yes, so it does me. Well, let's dig this piece, and then you can have a mouthful of lunch with me." "Thank you, no; I'll help you dig this piece, and then I must go. I'll come in another time. I want to see more of the garden." There was about ten minutes' steady digging, during which the curate showed that he was no mean hand with the spade, and then the old man paused for a moment to scrape the adherent soil from the broad blade. "My master will be back soon," he said; "and then there'll be some lunch; and, oh! here they are."