38 BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 



ordered our liberation. It was a loud "pit pat" my heart made 

 against my waistcoat, when, shy, pale, and trembling from head to 

 foot, I sought my companions, and found they had taken the alarm 

 and decamped, leaving me to my fate with the injured captain. 



But the supreme joy was blackberry ing. Long before August had 

 tipped the trees with red, — before indeed there was a single gauze 

 frill unfolded on the bramble, we began to arrange our blackberry- 

 parties. Topographical debates took place every day, much to the 

 detriment of school studies. Very soon the whole school was 

 absorbed in warm discussion on the relative merits of Hornsey, 

 Finchley, Wan stead, Epping, and Woodford, as suitable places of 

 resort for blackberry gathering. At last September came, and the 

 first jaunt took place. We took our dinners with us in our bags, 

 though many went without dinners, as they did without parental per- 

 mission ; and sometimes a whole class "played the wag," and started 

 direct for the forest instead of going to school. Many canings and 

 boxings of ears followed these expeditions. Many a red mark on 

 hands or face betrayed how this or that boy had become a martyr to 

 his love for blackberries, — though his pride never suffered him to ac- 

 knowledge it. Lips bore their black stains for days aftei wards ; scars 

 and thorn-marks were to be seen; and the unusual oscillation of 

 hands from mouth to pocket and from pocket to mouth told plainly 

 enough of the store of blackberries which had been brought under 

 cover to the school, and which, half- cooked in the trowsers pocket, 

 were eaten with indescribable relish. 



One striking trait of boys is their extraordinary appetite. Did you 

 ever know a boy who had had enough to eat ? Fill him tight as a 

 blown bladder at the dinner table, and he will go to school with his 

 pockets filled with grey peas, or sweetmeats, or cocoa-nut. We can 

 vividly remember how, when we were " flush " with money, we ate no 

 end of luxuries ; but when the money had dwindled down to a last 

 halfpenny, we contented ourselves with a halfpenny carrot, which was 

 gnawed by a dozen different boys, until it came back to its owner a 

 wretched remnant of its former edibility. There is scarcely anything 

 that boys will not eat; their test of the worth of a thing is, "can it 

 be eaten ? " We always made it a point to get home soon at dinner- 

 time on washing day, in order to fill the ashpit of the copper fire with 

 potatoes and onions for roasting, the cooking of which occupied our 

 whole thought during the afternoon, and kept us in an excited state 



