THE COUNTRY-SIDE: SUSSEX. 79 
ordinary walking-stick or with one in each hand. When 
he walks he keeps putting the staff, which he calls a bat, 
in front, and so poles himself along. There is an 
invalid boy in the yard, who walks with a similar stick. 
The farmer is talking with a friend who has looked in 
from the lane in passing, and carries a two-spean spud, 
or Canterbury hoe, with points instead of a broad blade. 
They are saying that it is a ‘ pretty day,’ ‘ pretty weather’ 
—it is always ‘ pretty’ with them, instead of fine. Pretty 
weather for the hopping ; and so that leads on to climb- 
ing up into the loft and handling the golden scales. 
The man with the hoe dips his brown fist in the heap 
and gathers up a handful, noting as he does so how the 
crisp, brittle, leaf-life substance of the hops crackles, and 
yet does not exactly break in his palm. They must be 
dry, yet not too dry to go to powder. They cling a 
little to the fingers, adhering to the skin, sticky. He 
looks for rust and finds none, and pronounces it a good 
sample. ‘But there beant nothen’ now like they old 
Grapes used to be, he concludes. The pair have not 
long gone down the narrow stairs when a waggon stops 
outside in the lane, and up comes the carter to speak 
with the ‘drier’—the giant trampling round in the 
pocket—and to see how the hops ‘be getting on.’ In 
five minutes another waggoner looks in, then a couple 
of ploughboys, next a higgler passing by ; no one walks 
or rides or drives past the hop-kiln without calling to see 
how things are going on. The carters cannot stay long, 
but the boys linger, eagerly waiting a chance to help the 
‘drier, even if only to reach him his handkerchief from 
the nail, Round and round in the pocket brings out 
the perspiration, and the dust of the hops gets into the 
air-passages and thickens on the skin of his face. One 
of the lads has to push the hops towards him with a 
