Are often two youngsters of a
perambulator age in the same family at the same time. To weave that
donkey and that Bath 'cheer' through the narrow streets of the
various Belverns without putting to death any babies, and without
engendering the outspoken condemnation of the screaming mothers and
nurserymaids, is a task for a Jehu. Of course Jane makes it more
difficult by lunging into one perambulator in avoiding another, but
she prefers even that risk to the degradation of treading the path I
wish her to tread.
I often wish that for one brief moment I might remove the lid of
Jane's brain and examine her mental processes. She would not
exasperate me so deeply if I could be certain of her springs of
action. Is she old, is she rheumatic, is she lazy, is she hungry?
Sometimes I think she means well, and is only ignorant and dull; but
this hypothesis grows less and less tenable as I know her better.
Sometimes I conclude that she does not understand me; that the
difference in nationality may trouble her. If an Englishman cannot
understand an American woman all at once, why should an English
donkey? Perhaps it takes an American donkey to comprehend an
American woman. Yet I cannot bring myself to drive any other
donkey; I am always hoping to impress myself on her imagination, and
conquer her will through her fancy. Meanwhile, I like to feel
myself in the grasp of a nature stronger than my own, and so I hold
to Jane, and buy a photograph of St. Bridget's Well!
Chapter XXII. Comfort Cottage.
It was about two o'clock in the afternoon, and I suddenly heard a
strange sound, that of our fowl cackling. Yesterday I heard her
tell-tale note about noon, and the day before just as I was eating
my breakfast. I knew that it would be so! The serpent has entered
Eden. That fowl has laid before eight in the morning for three
weeks without interruption, and she has now entered upon a career of
wild and reckless uncertainty which compels me to eat eggs from
twelve to twenty-four hours old, just as if I were in London.
Alas for the rarity
Of regularity
Under the sun!
A hen, being of the feminine gender, underestimates the majesty of
order and system; she resents any approach to the unimaginative
monotony of the machine. Probably the Confederated Fowl Union has
been meddling with our little paradise where Labour and Capital have
dwelt in heavenly unity until now. Nothing can be done about it, of
course; even if it were possible to communicate with the fowl, she
would say, I suppose, that she would lay when she was ready, and not
before; at least, that is what an American hen would say.
