Chapter 118 Chapter 180

It was very dark when Philip reached Ferney.Ferney was the hometown of Madame Athelny.She developed the habit of collecting hops since she was a child. After she married her husband and had children, she still came here with them every year to collect hops.Like many fellow Kents, her family went out regularly to collect hops, earning a few bucks to supplement the family, but mainly saw the trip as an annual excursion, and regarded it as a most enjoyable holiday .As early as a few months before the arrival of this festival, the whole family is eagerly looking forward to it.It was not a heavy job, and everyone worked together in the open air to pick it vigorously.It was a long, not without fun cookout for the kids.In this hop meadow, boys can meet girls; after work, in the long night, they play in pairs and chase in the streets and alleys, having fun.So, once the hop-gathering season is over, the wedding ceremony will follow.The bride and groom sat in large carts, which contained bedding, bottles and cans, as well as chairs, tables, and other objects.Once the hop-gathering season was over, Ferney seemed empty.The locals are very xenophobic, and have always opposed the intrusion of "foreigners"--they often call Cockneys "foreigners".The locals looked down on the Cockneys and feared them at the same time.They regarded Cockneys as rough creatures, and decent people in the country would not marry them.In the past, people who came here to collect hops slept in the barn, but ten years ago, a row of huts was built on one side of the pasture.After all, the Athelny family lived in the same hut every year they came here like other families.

Athelny drove a carriage to the station to fetch Philip.The carriage had been borrowed from the Meadow Tavern, where he had also booked a room for Philip.The tavern is only a quarter of a mile from the pasture.They left Philip's luggage in the room, and went out to the hop meadows, which were covered with huts.The huts here are long and low, divided into several rooms, each about twelve feet square.A bonfire was lit with branches in front of each hut, and the family sat around the bonfire, watching eagerly as the dinner was cooked.The sea breeze and the sun had turned the faces of Athelny's children brown.Madame Athelny wore a sun hat, and she looked so different, giving the impression that years of city life had changed her little.She is a country woman through and through.See how at ease she is in the country atmosphere.At this time, she was frying sausages, and at the same time she kept an eye on the children beside her.When Philip arrived, however, she gave him a warm handshake and a smile of welcome.Athelny began to describe with passion the joys of country life.

"Living in the city, we yearn for sunshine and light. That's not life, it's a long term prison. Let's sell everything, Betty, and start a farm in the country!" "I know how you behave in the country," said Madame Athelny, cheerily reproaching her husband. "Why, when it rains in winter, you'll be clamoring to go back to London," she said, turning round to Philip. "Athelny always looks like this when we come here. What, oh country, I like you so much! Why, he can't even tell which is a beet and which is a cabbage." "Daddy was lazy today," broke in Gene, who was very blunt, "he didn't even pick a basket."

"I'm learning how to pick in no time, boy. You'll see tomorrow, I'll pick more than all of you put together." "Come to supper, children," cried Madame Athelny. "Where did Sally go?" "Mom, I'm here." As soon as the words fell, Sally came out from the hut.At this time, the wood in the fire was crackling, and the flames shot up, and the flames reflected her face red.Philip had noticed of late that she was always wearing the clean overalls which she had liked to wear since she had gone to work at the sewing factory, but this evening she had a sort of charm in her calico blouse.This coat is baggy, and it makes my body much more flexible when I work in it.The sleeves are rolled up, exposing her strong, chubby arms.Like her mother, she also wore a sun hat.

"You look like a fairy milkmaid," said Philip, shaking her hand. "She's a hop-pitch beauty," said Aterham, "and I dare say if the squire's son had seen you, he'd have asked you in a second." "The squire has no sons, father," returned Sally. She looked around for a seat.When Philip saw it, he moved to make room for her to sit beside him.On this night brightly lit by the bonfire, Sally looked amazingly beautiful, like a simple goddess, reminiscent of those watery, healthy and beautiful girls described by old Herrick in his elegant and delicate lines. .Dinner was simple, sausages on bread and butter.The children drank tea, and the Athelnys drank beer with Philip.Athelny ate voraciously, admiring each mouthful loudly.He kept laughing at Ruckles and swearing at Brilat-Savarin.

"Athelny, there is one thing in which you deserve credit," said his wife, "and that is your appetite for food, and that's right!" "My Betty, you made this with your own hands," said Athelny, pointing forward like an orator. Philip was in a very good mood.He gazed joyfully at the long string of bonfires.People sat around the fire to keep warm, gazing at the red fire that pierced the night.At the end of the meadow stood a row of elms; overhead, the stars were shining.The children were chattering and laughing, and Athelny, like a child, crowded among them, making them howl and howl with his tricks and fantastic stories.

"People here love Athelny," said Mrs. Athelny to Philip. "Well, Mrs. Bridges said to me one day that we don't know what to do now without Mr. Athelny. He's always juggling that he's the head of the family, and it's better It would be more appropriate to say he looks like a schoolboy." Sally sat in silence, but she attended to Philip with such attentiveness that it fascinated him.Philip was glad to have her by his side.He glanced now and then at her healthy, sun-tanned face.Once, when their eyes met, Sally smiled quietly at him.After supper, Gene and another little boy were sent to fetch a bucket of dishwater from the creek at the end of the pasture.

"Boys, show your Uncle Philip to where we sleep. It's time for you to go to bed too." The children stretched out a pair of small hands, tugging, tugging, surrounded Philip and walked towards the hut.He walked into the hut, and immediately lit a match, and saw that there was almost no furniture in the hut, except for a tin box for storing clothes, and only a few beds.There are three beds in total, all placed against the wall.Athelny followed Philip into the hut, showing him the bed proudly. "This is the kind of bed we sleep in," he kept yelling. "Here is none of the box-springs and velvet quilts you sleep on. I have never slept so sweetly anywhere. You must sleep wrapped in sheets. Dear boy, I will I feel sorry for you."

The three beds were covered with a thick layer of hops, and the hops were covered with a layer of straw, and the top was covered with a blanket.The open air exudes a strong fragrance of hops. After working in this environment for a whole day, the carefree collectors fell asleep, and all of them slept like dead people.At nine o'clock in the evening, there was no one around the pasture, shrouded in silence.One or two drunks hang out in the tavern, and don't come home until the tavern closes at ten o'clock.Other than that, everyone else fell asleep.Athelny sent Philip to the tavern to rest. Before leaving, Mrs. Athelny said to Philip:

"We have breakfast at a quarter past five. I don't think you get up that early. Tell me we have to work at six." "Of course he has to get up early," continued Athelny. "He has to work like everyone else to earn food. If you don't work, you have nothing to eat, my brother." "The kids will wake you up on the way back when they go swimming before breakfast. They'll walk past the Merry Sailor's Tavern." "They come to wake me up, and I'll go swimming with them," said Philip. When he said this, Gene, Harold, and Edward cried out with joy, and the next morning Philip's dream was interrupted by the noise of the children breaking into the room, and they jumped onto his bed one by one. .He had to lift his slippers to drive them off.He hastily put on a coat and trousers, and followed them downstairs.It was just dawn, and there was still a slight chill in the air. The sky was cloudless, and the sun was shining golden.Sally was standing in the middle of the road, holding Connie's hand, a towel and a bathing suit slung over her arm.Only then did he see clearly that her sun hat was lavender, and against it, her face was black and red, like an apple.She greeted Philip with her usual unhurried smile.Suddenly Philip noticed that her teeth were small, neat and white.He couldn't help wondering how he hadn't noticed this before.

"I wanted you to sleep a little longer," Sally began, "but they're going to wake you up. I told them you didn't want to go swimming in the sea." "Where it is, I really want to go." They walked along the road for a while, and then crossed patches of grass.In this way they could reach the sea in less than a mile.The sea was gray and cold, and Philip felt a shiver when he saw it.But at this time, the children all took off their clothes and ran into the sea while shouting.Sally took her time in everything she did, and did not go down until the children were splashing around Philip.Swimming was Philip's forte, and he felt at ease as soon as he was in the water.After a while, the children all imitated his posture, sometimes pretending to be a drowning person, and sometimes pretending to be a fat woman who wants to swim but is afraid of getting her hair wet.Look at their virtues, if Sally didn't yell harshly, they wouldn't know how long they would play until they wanted to go ashore. "You're as bad as any of them," Sally said reproachfully to Philip, speaking with the seriousness of a mother.His demeanor is both dramatic and touching. "They've never been this naughty without you." They were walking back, Sally holding the sun hat, her beautiful hair hanging over one shoulder.When they got back to the hut, Mrs. Athelny had gone to work in the hop meadow.Athelny had on a pair of trousers that no one had worn, and his coat was buttoned up to the neck, which showed that he had no shirt underneath.He had a slouch hat on and was smoking male trout over the fire.He was enjoying himself and looked like a bandit.As soon as he saw them all, he began to recite at the top of his voice the lines of the witch from "Macbeth," while the male trout he smoked gave off a foul stench. "You shouldn't have been playing so long, it's past breakfast time and Mom is going to be mad," he said when they came to him. A few minutes later, Harold and Gene took some slices of bread and butter and wandered across the meadow towards the hop meadow.They were the last to leave.The hop garden was one of the scenes closely associated with Philip's childhood, and to him the hop drying house was the most quintessentially Kentish.Philip followed Sally through the rows of hops.He is not unfamiliar with everything here, as if he has returned to his own home.At this time, the sun is bright, and the shadows of the people are cast on the ground, with sharp outlines.Philip stared intently at the lush greenery.The hops were turning yellow, and it seemed to him that there was beauty and passion in them, as the Sicilian poets found in the purple grapes.They walked side by side, and Philip felt completely intoxicated by the lushness and prosperity of everything around him.There was a sweet, fragrant scent rising from the fertile Kentish earth; and the September breeze, now and then, carried the rich, seductive scent of the hops.Athelstan couldn't help feeling hot, and couldn't help but sing aloud, but he uttered the hoarse voice of a fifteen-year-old boy. No wonder Sally turned around and said: "Athelstan, please sit quietly for me, otherwise, all we can hear is the sound of thunder. After a while, chattering and chirping sounds came from my ears, and after a while, the hop gatherers spoke even louder.They kept working hard, talking and laughing non-stop.Then some people sat on chairs, some sat on square stools, and some sat on wooden boxes. Everyone had a basket beside them, and some simply stood beside the big box and picked the hops. Straight into the big box.There are many children around, and many nursing babies, some of them are lying in movable cradles, and some are wrapped in torn quilts and placed on the soft, dry ground.Children don't pick much, but they have a lot to play with.The women are constantly busy, they are used to picking from childhood, and the speed is twice as fast as the stranger from London.They ostentatiously reported the bushels of hops they picked in a day, and then complained persistently that they were making far less money than they had ever been.It used to be a shilling for every five bushels you picked, but now you got eight, or even nine, for a shilling.In the past, the money earned by a fast player in one season was enough to maintain her life for the rest of the year, but now she can't do it at all. She just came for a vacation and can't get anything.Mrs. Hill bought a piano with the hop money--so she said--but her life was shabby enough that no one would want to live.Some people thought she said so, and if it came out, it might be known that she had gone to the bank to raise enough money to buy the piano. The hop pickers are divided into groups of ten, excluding children.So Athelny boasted aloud that one day he would have a group composed entirely of his family.Each group has a leader who places bundles of hops next to each person's hop sack (a large sack seven feet high placed on a wooden frame. Rows of hops are placed in two piles in the middle of the hops), and Athelny is jealous of the group leader, so he hopes that the children will grow up soon, and then they can form a group by themselves.At this time, rather than saying that he was working hard, it would be better to say that he came to encourage others to work hard.He swung leisurely to Madame Athelny, with a cigarette in his mouth, and began to gather hops.Madame Athelny, who had been working with her hands without rest for half an hour, had just poured a basket of hops into a sack.Athelny insisted that he would pick more than anyone else that day, except the mother, of course, because no one could pick as fast as she.This incident reminded him of the legend of Aphrodite's temptations to Psage, and he told the children the story of Psage's love for a bridegroom she had never met. coming.He spoke eloquently.Philip listened, with a smile on his lips; the old legend seemed to him to be in perfect harmony with the scene around him.The sky was blue and blue, and he didn't think the sky would be so beautiful even in Greece.The children's hair is golden, their cheeks are like two roses, their bodies are strong, magnificent, and full of vitality; the shape of hops is exquisite and clear; Shrunk to a point in the distance; the hop gatherers, one by one, wore sun hats.All of this is more Greek than you find in textbooks written by professors or in museums.Philip was passionate about the beauty of England.He thought of the quiet winding roads, the bushes woven into hedges, the green meadows dotted with elms, the graceful lines of the hills and the overlying grave mounds. , patches of flat swampland, and the bleak and desolate scene of the North Sea.He was very glad that he felt the beauty and beauty of England.But before long, Athelny became fidgety and claimed to go to see how Robert Kemp's mother was doing.He knew everyone in Hops Meadows very well, always by their Christian names, and he knew every family history and the origins of every member.Although he was vain, he had a good heart and played the role of a fashionable gentleman among people.He treats people with kindness, but there is a bit of solicitousness in that kindness.Philip would not go with him. "I'm going to work and earn a living," he said. "Well said, my brother," said Athelny, waving his arms in the air, and going away. "No work, no food!"