Read "A Garden Plot" by W.W. Jacobs online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The able-bodied men of the village were at work, the children were at / school singing the multiplication-table lullaby, while the wives and / mothers at home nursed the baby with one hand and did the housework with / the other. At the end of the village an old man past work sat at a rough / deal table under the creaking signboard of the Cauliflower, gratefully / drinking from a mug of ale supplied by a chance traveller who sat / opposite him.
The shade of the elms was pleasant and the ale good. The traveller / filled his pipe and, glancing at the dusty hedges and the white road / baking in the sun, called for the mugs to be refilled, and pushed his / pouch towards his companion. After which he paid a compliment to the / appearance of the village.