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little separate pies made for the purpose: with the accompanying message:
“Please, mother say will you accept of a bit o’ gooseberry poie?”
    The person thus addressed was commonly as well assured of the coming of
the pie as of the coming of fair-day, and might even have witnessed its
hazardous transport through crowds of merrymakers the length of the village.
But it was good form, nevertheless, to affect ineffable surprise and delight
at the present, and to make the return in kind (if, indeed, the present were
not itself a return compliment) with expressions of depreciation of her own
handicraft. “I am that ashamed arltogether…if your mother will axcuse…”
and so forth.
    And so the gooseberry pie circulated with the proper compliments, the
gingerbread was knocked down, ballads were bought and rolled up, the girls
and women “argle-bargled” for gown pieces and garters, and all things went
very merrily together. At the Castle Inn and the Crown the thirst induced by
spicenuts and peppermint and the general circumstances was quelled in many
pots of “thruppenny;” but again those with friends in the village had the
advantage; for in half-a-dozen of the better keeping-rooms at least the man
of the house would shut the door with a wink, and elicit from some obscure
retreat a bottle; a bottle charged with cognac or hollands of a strength and
quality that were a sufficient certificate of origin to the man of
experience.
    Very early on fair-morning Roboshobery Dove was astir, and planting out
young cabbages in his garden. He stood on a plank, and used his wooden leg as
a dibble, driving a proper number of holes at suitable distances apart. This
done, he loosened the buckles, knelt, and set and packed his plants in the
holes thus prepared. Ever he kept an eye on the road for early arrivals, for
that way came all passengers from Rayleigh, Pitsea, or Bemfleet, and he
greatly desired a peep at yesterday’s Chelmsford Chronicle , if by
chance a copy might have been brought in.
    His breakfast he took in two instalments, before and after the planting
out, and then left his cottage to the care of the old woman who “tighted up”
for him. Spick and span, in a clean green smock, with his hat shining in the
sunlight, Roboshobery Dove stumped down the road to the village, now busy and
gay. A group of small children with daisy chains on sticks went straggling
along in mock procession, singing each his or her own perversion of the old
rhyme:
    Oliver Cromwell lay buried and dead,
Heigho! buried and dead!
There grew a green apple-tree over his head,
Heigho! over his head!
The apples were ripe and all ready to drop,
Heigho! ready to drop!
Then came an old woman to gather the crop,
Heigho! gather the crop!
Oliver rose and gave her a crack,
Heigho! gave her a crack!
That knocked the old woman flat down on her back,
Heigho! down on her back!
The apples are dried and they lie on the shelf,
Heigho! lie on the shelf!
If you want e’er a one you must get it yourself
Heigho! get it yourself!
    The perversions all had for their object the substitution of gooseberry
pie for the dried apples, and therein they were made to succeed regardless of
metre, to the demoralisation of the whole poetical structure. Roboshobery
Dove had shouldered his stick, by way of keeping character with the
procession as he caught it up, but ere he quite did so the children checked
their march, and the train closed into a whispering group and strayed out
into the road. Roboshobery looked up and saw Dorrily Thorn, pale and sad,
coming along the path.
    “Mornin’!” said Roboshobery, raising his hand in salute. “That aren’t a
fair-day face, my gal!”
    “I’m tired. Master Dove, an’ ailing a little,” Dorrily answered, and
sought to pass on. But the old man lifted his wooden leg as a barrier, and,
bringing it down, took a pace to the left, confronting her with a grin on his
broad face.
    “O, Johnny’s