There seem to be many ways of taking the very simplest fact we meet and if any man was sure to take things by his own light, it was my good Uncle. When a friend, or even a useful neighbour, offered a free opinion, my Uncle Cornelius would look at him, say never a word, but be almost certain to go downright against that particular view. One of his favourite sayings was, “Every man has a right to his own opinion,” although he was a strict Conservative – and of that right he was so jealous, that he hated to have his opinions shared. And this was a very lucky thing for me, as I cannot help seeing and saying.
For the very next morning, a neighbour came in (when I was gone prowling, I need not say where), and having some business, he told Tabby Tapscott to show him where her master was most likely to be found. This gentleman was Mr. Rasp, the baker, who kept two women, a man, and a boy, and did the finest trade in Sunbury. And what he wanted now was to accept my Uncle’s offer, at which he had hum’d and hawed a week ago, of ten sacks of chat potatoes at fifteen pence a bushel, for the purpose of mixing with his best white bread. By the post of that morning Mr. Rasp had heard from the great flour-mills at Uxbridge, that good grindings were gone up six shillings a quarter, and sure to be quoted still higher next week, by reason of the cold, wet harvest. But he did not intend to tell Uncle Corny this.
That excellent gardener was under his big wall, which had formed part of the monastic enclosure, and was therefore the best piece of brickwork in the parish, as well as a warm home and sure fortress to the peach and nectarine. This wall had its aspect about S.S.E., the best that can be for fruit-trees, and was flanked with return walls at either end; and the sunshine, whenever there seemed to be any, was dwelling and blushing in this kind embrace. The summers might be bitter – as they generally are – but if ever a peach donned crimson velvet in the South of England out of doors, it was sure to be sitting upon this old red wall and looking out for Uncle Corny.
Mr. Cornelius Orchardson, as most people called him when they tried to get his money, glanced over his shoulder when he heard the baker coming, and then began to drive a nail with more than usual care. Not that he ever drove any nail rashly, such an act was forbidden by his constitution; but that he now was in his deepest calm, as every man ought to be in the neighbourhood of a bargain. His manner was always collected and dry, and his words quite as few as were needful; and he never showed any desire to get the better of any one, only a sense of contentment, whenever he was not robbed. This is often the case with broad-shouldered people, if they only move quietly and are not flurried; and my good Uncle Corny possessed in his way every one of these elements of honesty.
“Good morning, Mr. Orchardson!” said Rasp the baker. “What a pleasure it is to see a glimpse of sun at last! And what a fine colour these red bricks do give you!”
“As good as the bakehouse,” said my Uncle shortly. “But look out where you are treading, Rasp. I want every one of them strawberry-runners. What brings you here? I am rather busy now.”
“Well, I happened to see as your door was open, so I thought I’d just jog your memory, to have them potatoes put up in the dry, while I’ve got my copper lighted.”
“Potatoes! Why, you would not have them, Rasp. You said fifteen pence a bushel was a deal too much, and potatoes were all water such a year as this. And now I’ve got a better customer.”
“Well, it don’t matter much either way,” said the baker; “but I always took you, Mr. Orchardson, to be a man of your word, sir – a man of your word.”
“So I am. But I know what my words are; and we came to no agreement. Your very last words were – ‘A shilling, and no more.’ Can you deny that, Rasp?”
“Well, I didn’t put it down, sir, and my memory plays tricks. But I told my wife that it was all settled; and she said, ‘Oh, I do like to deal with Mr. Orchardson, he gives such good measure.’ So I brought round the money in this little bag, thirty-seven shillings and sixpence. Never mind for a receipt, sir; everybody knows what you are.”
“Yes, so they do,” answered Uncle Corny; “they’d rather believe me than you, Master baker. Now how much is flour gone up this morning, and floury potatoes to follow it? Never a chat goes out of my gate, under one and sixpence a bushel.”
“This sort of thing is too much for me. There is something altogether wrong with the times. There is no living to be made out of them.” Mr. Rasp shook his head at the peaches on the wall, as if they were dainties he must not dare to look at.
“Rasp, you shall have a peach,” declared my Uncle Corny, for he was a man who had come to a good deal of wisdom; “you shall have the best peach on the whole of this wall, and that means about the best in England. I will not be put out with you, Rasp, for making a fine effort to cheat me. You are a baker; and you cannot help it.”
If any other man in Sunbury was proud of his honesty, so was Rasp; and taking this speech as a compliment to it, he smiled and pulled a paper-bag from his pocket, to receive the best peach on the wall for his wife.
“What a difference one day’s sun has made! At one time I doubted if they would colour, for it is the worst summer I have known for many years. But they were all ready, as a maiden is to blush, when she expects her sweetheart’s name. With all my experience, I could scarcely have believed it; what a change since Saturday! But ‘live and learn’ is the gardener’s rule. Galande, the best peach of all, in my opinion, is not yet ripe; but Grosse Mignonne is, and though rather woolly in a year like ’57, it is first-rate in a cool season. Observe the red spots near the caudal cavity – why bless my heart, Rasp, I meant that for your wife!”
“My wife has a very sad toothache to-day, and she would never forgive me if I made it worse. But what wonderful things they are to run!”
This baker had a gentle streak of juice in either runnel of his chin, which was shaped like a well-fed fleur-de-lis; and he wiped it all dry with the face of the bag, upon which his own name was printed.
“I knows a good thing, when I sees it; and that’s more than a woman in a hundred does. Don’t believe they can taste, or at least very few of them. Why, they’d sooner have tea than a glass of good beer! Howsoever, that’s nought to do with business. Mr. Orchardson, what’s your lowest figure? With a wall of fruit coming on like them, sixpence apiece and some thousands of them, you mustn’t be hard on a neighbour.”
My Uncle sat down on his four-legged stool (which had bars across the feet, for fear of sinking, when the ground was spongy), and he pulled his bag of vamp-leather to the middle of his waistcoat, and felt for a shred and a nail. He had learned that it never ends in satisfaction, if a man grows excited in view of a bargain, or even shows any desire to deal. Then he put up his elbow, and tapped the nail in, without hitting it hard, as the ignorant do.
“Come, I’ll make a fair offer,” the baker exclaimed, for he never let business do justice to itself; “an offer that you might call handsome, if you was looking at it in a large point of view. I’ll take fifty bushels at fifteen pence, pick ’em over myself, for the pigs and the men; and if any crusty people turn up, why here I am!”
“Rasp, you make a very great mistake,” said my Uncle, turning round upon his stool, and confronting him with strong honesty, “if you suppose that I have anything to do with the use you make of my potatoes. I sell you my goods for the utmost I can get, and you take good care that it is very little. What you do with them afterwards is no concern of mine. I owe you no thanks, and you know me not from Adam the moment you have paid me. This is the doctrine of free-trade – you recognize everything, except men.”
“Tell you what it is,” replied the baker; “sooner than vex you, Mr. Orchardson, I’ll give sixteen pence all round, just as they come out of the row. Who could say fairer than that now?”
“Eighteen is the money. Not a farthing under. From all that I can hear, it will be twenty pence to-morrow. Why, here’s another fine peach fit to come! I shall send it to your wife, and tell her you ate hers.”
The gardener merrily nailed away, while the baker was working his hands for nothing. “You would never do such a thing as that,” he said; “a single man have no call to understand a woman;