<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
<p style="text-align: right">July 12th.</p>
<p>O the pathos of a poultry farm! Catherine of Aragon, the
black Spanish hen that stole her nest, brought out nine chicks
this morning, and the business-like and marble-hearted
Phœbe has taken them away and given them to another hen who
has only seven. Two mothers cannot be wasted on these small
families—it would not be profitable; and the older mother,
having been tried and found faithful over seven, has been given
the other nine and accepted them. What of the bereft
one? She is miserable and stands about moping and forlorn,
but it is no use fighting against the inevitable; hens’
hearts must obey the same laws that govern the rotation of
crops. Catherine of Aragon feels her lot a bitter one just
now, but in time she will succumb, and lay, which is more to the
point.</p>
<p>We have had a very busy evening, beginning with the
rats’ supper—delicate sandwiches of bread-and-butter
spread with Paris green.</p>
<p>We have a new brood of seventeen ducklings just hatched this
afternoon. When we came to the nest the yellow and brown
bunches of down and fluff were peeping out from under the
hen’s wings in the prettiest fashion in the world.</p>
<p>“It’s a noble hen!” I said to
Phœbe.</p>
<p>“She ain’t so nowble as she looks,”
Phœbe answered grimly. “It was another
’en that brooded these eggs for near on three weeks and
then this big one come along with a fancy she’d like a
family ’erself if she could steal one without too much
trouble; so she drove the rightful ’en off the nest,
finished up the last few days, and ’ere she is in
possession of the ducklings!”</p>
<p>“Why don’t you take them away from her and give
them back to the first hen, who did most of the work?” I
asked, with some spirit.</p>
<p>“Like as not she wouldn’t tyke them now,”
said Phœbe, as she lifted the hen off the broken egg-shells
and moved her gently into a clean box, on a bed of fresh
hay. We put food and drink within reach of the family, and
very proud and handsome that highway robber of a hen looked, as
she stretched her wings over the seventeen easily-earned
ducklings.</p>
<p>Going back to the old nesting-box, I found one egg forgotten
among the shells. It was still warm, and I took it up to
run across the field with it to Phœbe. It was heavy,
and the carrying of it was a queer sensation, inasmuch as it
squirmed and “yipped” vociferously in transit,
threatening so unmistakably to hatch in my hand that I was
decidedly nervous. The intrepid little youngster burst his
shell as he touched Phœbe’s apron, and has become the
strongest and handsomest of the brood.</p>
<p>All this tending of downy young things, this feeding and
putting to bed, this petting and nursing and rearing, is such
pretty, comforting woman’s work. I am sure
Phœbe will make a better wife to the carrier for having
been a poultry-maid, and though good enough for most practical
purposes when I came here, I am an infinitely better woman
now. I am afraid I was not particularly nice the last few
days at the Hydro. Such a lot of dull, prosy, inquisitive,
bothering old tabbies! Aunt Margaret furnishing imaginary
symptoms enough to keep a fond husband and two trained nurses
distracted; a man I had never encouraged in my life coming to
stay in the neighbourhood and turning up daily for rejection;
another man taking rooms at the very hotel with the avowed
purpose of making my life a burden; and on the heels of both, a
widow of thirty-five in full chase! Small wonder I thought
it more dignified to retire than to compete, and so I did.</p>
<p>I need not, however, have cut the threads that bound me to
Oxenbridge with such particularly sharp scissors, nor given them
such a vicious snap; for, so far as I can observe, the little
world of which I imagined myself the sun continues to revolve,
and, probably, about some other centre. I can well imagine
who has taken up that delightful but somewhat exposed and
responsible position—it would be just like her!</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<SPAN href="images/p51b.jpg">
<ANTIMG alt="Threatened . . . to hatch in my hand" src="images/p51s.jpg" /></SPAN></p>
<p>I am perfectly happy where I am; it is not that; but it seems
so strange that they can be perfectly happy without me, after all
that they—after all that was said on the subject not many
days ago. Nothing turns out as one expects. There
have been no hot pursuits, no rewards offered, no bills posted,
no printed placards issued describing the beauty and charms of a
young person who supposed herself the cynosure of every
eye. Heigh-ho! What does it matter, after all?
One can always be a Goose Girl!</p>
<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p>
<p>I wonder if the hen mother is quite, quite satisfied with her
ducklings! Do you suppose the fact of hatching and brooding
them breaks down all the sense of difference? Does she not
sometimes reflect that if her children were the ordinary sort,
and not these changelings, she would be enjoying certain pretty
little attentions dear to a mother’s heart? The
chicks would be pecking the food off her broad beak with their
tiny ones, and jumping on her back to slide down her glossy
feathers. They would be far nicer to cuddle, too, so small
and graceful and light; the changelings are a trifle solid and
brawny. And personally, just as a matter of taste, would
she not prefer wee, round, glancing heads, and pointed beaks,
peeping from under her wings, to these teaspoon-shaped things
larger than her own? I wonder!</p>
<p>We are training fourteen large young chickens to sit on the
perches in their new house, instead of huddling together on the
floor as has been their habit, because we discover rat-holes
under the wire flooring occasionally, and fear that toes may be
bitten. At nine o’clock Phœbe and I lift the
chickens one by one, and, as it were, glue them to their perches,
squawking. Three nights have we gone patiently through with
this performance, but they have not learned the lesson. The
ducks and geese are, however, greatly improved by the application
of advanced educational methods, and the <i>régime</i> of
perfect order and system instituted by Me begins to show
results.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<SPAN href="images/p53b.jpg">
<ANTIMG alt="One can always be a Goose Girl" src="images/p53s.jpg" /></SPAN></p>
<p>There is no more violent splashing and pebbling, racing,
chasing, separating. The pole, indeed, still has to be
produced, but at the first majestic wave of my hand they scuttle
toward the shore. The geese turn to the right, cross the
rickyard, and go to their pen; the May ducks turn to the left for
their coops, the June ducks follow the hens to the top meadow,
and even the idiot gosling has an inspiration now and then and
stumbles on his own habitation.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<SPAN href="images/p54.jpg">
<ANTIMG alt="The geese . . . cross the rickyard" src="images/p54.jpg" /></SPAN></p>
<p>Mrs. Heaven has no reverence for the principles of Comenius,
Pestalozzi, or Herbert Spencer as applied to poultry, and when
the ducks and geese came out of the pond badly the other night
and went waddling and tumbling and hissing all over creation, did
not approve of my sending them back into the pond to start
afresh.</p>
<p>“I consider it a great waste of time, of good time,
miss,” she said; “and, after all, do you consider
that educated poultry will be any better eating, or that it will
lay more than one egg a day, miss?”</p>
<p>I have given the matter some attention, and I fear Mrs. Heaven
is right. A duck, a goose, or a hen in which I have
developed a larger brain, implanted a sense of duty, or instilled
an idea of self-government, is likely, on the whole, to be
leaner, not fatter. There is nothing like obeying the voice
of conscience for taking the flesh off one’s bones; and,
speaking of conscience, Phœbe, whose metaphysics are of the
farm farmy, says that hers “felt like a hunlaid hegg for
dyes” after she had jilted the postman.</p>
<p>As to the eggs, I am sure the birds will go on laying one a
day for ’tis their nature to. Whether the product of
the intelligent, conscious, logical fowl, will be as rich in
quality as that of the uneducated and barbaric bird, I cannot
say; but it ought at least to be equal to the Denmark egg eaten
now by all Londoners; and if, perchance, left uneaten, it is
certain to be a very superior wife and mother.</p>
<p>While we are discussing the subject of educating poultry, I
confess that the case of Cannibal Ann gives me much
anxiety. Twice in her short career has she been under
suspicion of eating her own eggs, but Phœbe has never
succeeded in catching her <i>in flagrante delicto</i>. That
eminent detective service was reserved for me, and I have been
haunted by the picture ever since. It is an awful sight to
witness a hen gulp her own newly-laid fresh egg, yolk, white,
shell, and all; to realise that you have fed, sheltered, chased,
and occasionally run in, a being possessed of no moral sense, a
being likely to set a bad example, inculcate vicious habits among
her innocent sisters, and lower the standard of an entire
poultry-yard. <i>The Young Poultry Keeper’s
Friend</i> gives us no advice on this topic, and we do not know
whether to treat Cannibal Ann as the victim of a disease, or as a
confirmed criminal; whether to administer remedies or cut her off
in the flower of her youth.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<SPAN href="images/p56b.jpg">
<ANTIMG alt="Poor little chap, . . . ’e never was a fyvorite" src="images/p56s.jpg" /></SPAN></p>
<p>We have had a sad scene to-night. A chick has been
ailing all day, and when we shut up the brood we found him dead
in a corner.</p>
<p>Phœbe put him on the ground while she busied herself
about the coop. The other chicks came out and walked about
the dead one again and again, eyeing him curiously.</p>
<p>“Poor little chap!” said Phœbe.
“’E’s never ’ad a mother! ’E
was an incubytor chicken, and wherever I took ’im ’e
was picked at. There was somethink wrong with ’im;
’e never was a fyvorite!”</p>
<p>I put the fluffy body into a hole in the turf, and strewed a
handful of grass over him. “Sad little
epitaph!” I thought. “He never was a
fyvorite!”</p>
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