GREAT EXPECTATIONS 119 



hung up their scythes and returned for bush- 

 hooks, with which they swung and hacked all day, 

 and then, having charged on a bush-hooking 

 basis, which is one half larger price than plain 

 mowing, they departed, after assuring me that the 

 crop was of absolutely no value, which, as I had 

 been so informed for about two hundred times, 

 I knew perfectly. 



No long rains, no showers, no thunder-storms 

 came to interfere with haymaking, which could 

 scarcely have been the case had the crop been 

 of value. But after I had collected the entire 

 crop in one enormous pile it made a gorgeous 

 bonfire, but left a black smooch on the green sur- 

 face of my field that did not entirely disappear 

 during the rest of the season. 



My strawberry-plants had grown surprisingly, 

 but they demanded more of my time than almost 

 all the other crops together. For although they 

 grew very fast, they appeared to be on terms of in- 

 timacy with almost every sort of base weed, whose 

 company they appeared to court, and who in 

 turn were fondly embraced by the tendrils of 

 their aristocratic acquaintances. 



Again, these strawberry-plants had the most 

 astonishing fertility in sending out trailers or 

 creepers or shoots, which, if not pruned, would 

 in a very short time have converted the entire 

 farm into an enormous bed of strawberry vines. 



