Coming home we alighted from the trap to gather hogweed for the rabbits.

I sat by the wayside lazily and let Phoebe gather the appetising weed, which grows along the th.o.r.n.i.e.s.t hedges in close proximity to nettles and thistles.

Workmen were trudging along with their luncheon-baskets of woven bulrushes slung over their shoulders. Fields of ripening grain lay on either hand, the sun shining on their every shade of green and yellow, bronze and orange, while the breeze stirred the bearded barley into a rippling golden sea.

Phoebe asked me if the people I had left behind at the Hydropathic were my relatives.

"Some of them are of remote consanguinity," I responded evasively, and the next question was hushed upon her awe-stricken tongue, as I intended.

"They are obeying my wish to be let alone, there's no doubt of that," I was thinking. "For my part, I like a little more spirit, and a little less 'letter'!"

{Workmen were trudging home: p87.jpg}

As the word "letter" flitted through my thoughts, I pulled one from my pocket and glanced through it carelessly. It arrived, somewhat tardily, only last night, or I should not have had it with me. I wore the same dress to the post-office yesterday that I wore to the Hen Conference to- day, and so it chanced to be still in the pocket. If it had been anything I valued, of course I should have lost or destroyed it by mistake; it is only silly, worthless little things like this that keep turning up and turning up after one has forgotten their existence.

"You are a mystery!" [it ran.] "I can apprehend, but not comprehend you. I know you in part. I understand various bits of your nature; but my knowledge is always fragmentary and disconnected, and when I attempt to make a whole of the mosaics I merely get a kaleidoscopic effect. Do you know those geographical dissected puzzles that they give to children? You remind me of one of them.

"I have spent many charming (and dangerous) hours trying to 'put you together'; but I find, when I examine my picture closely, that after all I've made a purple mountain grow out of a green tree; that my river is running up a steep hillside; and that the pretty milkmaid, who should be wandering in the forest, is standing on her head with her pail in the air

"Do you understand yourself clearly? Or is it just possible that when you dive to the depths of your own consciousness, you sometimes find the pretty milkmaid standing on her head? I wonder!" . . .

Ah, well, it is no wonder that he wonders! So do I, for that matter!

CHAPTER XII

{Along the highway: p89.jpg}

July 17th.

Th.o.r.n.ycroft Farm seems to be the musical centre of the universe.

When I wake very early in the morning I lie in a drowsy sort of dream, trying to disentangle, one from the other, the various bird notes, trills, coos, croons, chirps, chirrups, and warbles. Suddenly there falls on the air a delicious, liquid, finished song; so pure, so mellow, so joyous, that I go to the window and look out at the morning world, half awakened, like myself.

There is I know not what charm in a window that does not push up, but opens its lattices out into the greenness. And mine is like a little jewelled door, for the sun is shining from behind the chimneys and lighting the tiny diamond panes with amber flashes.

A faint delicate haze lies over the meadow, and rising out of it, and soaring toward the blue is the lark, flinging out that matchless matin song, so rich, so thrilling, so lavish! As the blithe melody fades away, I hear the plaintive ballad-fragments of the robin on a curtsying branch near my window; and there is always the liquid pipe of the thrush, who must quaff a fairy goblet of dew between his songs, I should think, so fresh and eternally young is his note.

There is another beautiful song that I follow whenever I hear it, straining my eyes to the treetops, yet never finding a bird that I can identify as the singer. Can it be the--

"Ousel-c.o.c.k so black of hue, With orange-tawny bill"?

He is called the poet-laureate of the primrose time, but I don't know whether he sings in midsummer, and I have not seen him hereabouts. I must write and ask my dear Man of the North. The Man of the North, I sometimes think, had a Fairy Grandmother who was a robin; and perhaps she made a nest of fresh moss and put him in the green wood when he was a wee bairnie, so that he waxed wise in bird-lore without knowing it. At all events, describe to him the c.o.c.k of a head, the glance of an eye, the tip- up of a tail, or the sheen of a feather, and he will name you the bird.

Near-sighted he is, too, the Man of the North, but that is only for people.

The Square Baby and I have a new game.

I bought a doll's table and china tea-set in Buffington. We put it under an apple-tree in the side garden, where the scarlet lightning grows so tall and the Madonna lilies stand so white against the flaming background. We built a little fence around it, and every afternoon at tea-time we sprinkle seeds and crumbs in the dishes, water in the tiny cups, drop a cherry in each of the fruit-plates, and have a _the chantant_ for the birdies. We sometimes invite an "invaleed" duckling, or one of the baby rabbits, or the peac.o.c.k, in which case the cards read:--

_Th.o.r.n.ycroft Farm_.

The pleasure of your company is requested at a _The Chantant_ Under the Apple Tree.

Music at five.

It is a charming game, as I say, but I'd far rather play it with the Man of the North; he is so much younger than the Square Baby, and so much more responsive, too.

{The scent of the hay: p92.jpg}

Th.o.r.n.ycroft Farm is a sweet place, too, of odours as well as sounds. The scent of the hay is for ever in the nostrils, the hedges are thick with wild honeysuckle, so deliciously fragrant, the last of the June roses are lingering to do their share, and blackberry blossoms and ripening fruit as well.

I have never known a place in which it is so easy to be good. I have not said a word, nor scarcely harboured a thought, that was not lovely and virtuous since I entered these gates, and yet there are those who think me fantastic, difficult, hard to please, unreasonable!

{The last of June: p93.jpg}

I believe the saints must have lived in the country mostly (I am certain they never tried Hydropathic hotels), and why anybody with a black heart and natural love of wickedness should not simply buy a poultry farm and become an angel, I cannot understand.

{A place in which it is so easy to be good: p94.jpg}

Living with animals is really a very improving and wholesome kind of life, to the person who will allow himself to be influenced by their sensible and high-minded ideals. When you come to think about it, man is really the only animal that ever makes a fool of himself; the others are highly civilised, and never make mistakes. I am going to mention this when I write to somebody, sometime; I mean if I ever do. To be sure, our human life is much more complicated than theirs, and I believe when the other animals notice our errors of judgment they make allowances. The bee is as busy as a bee, and the beaver works like a beaver, but there their responsibility ends. The bee doesn't have to go about seeing that other bees are not crowded into unsanitary tenements or victimised by the sweating system. When the beaver's day of toil is over he doesn't have to discuss the sphere, the rights, or the voting privileges of beaveresses; all he has to do is to work like a beaver, and that is comparatively simple.

CHAPTER XIII

{Not particularly attracted by the poultry: p96.jpg}

I have been studying _The Young Poultry Keeper's Friend_ of late. If there is anything I dislike and deplore, it is the possession of knowledge which I cannot put to practical use. Having discovered an interesting disease called Scaly Leg in the July number, I took the magazine out into the poultry-yard and identified the malady on three hens and a c.o.c.k. Phoebe joined me in the diagnosis and we treated the victims with a carbolic lotion and scrubbed them with vaseline.

{Leaned languidly against the netting: p97.jpg}

As Phoebe and I grow wise in medical lore the case of Cannibal Ann a.s.sumes a different aspect. As the bibulous man quaffs more and more flagons of beer and wine when his daily food is ham, salt fish, and cabbage, so does the hen avenge her wrongs of diet and woes of environment. Cannibal Ann, herself, has, so far as we know, been raised in a Christian manner and enjoyed all the advantages of modern methods; but her maternal parent may have lived in some heathen poultry-yard which was asphalted or bricked or flagged, so that she was debarred from scratching in Mother Earth and was forced to eat her own sh.e.l.ls in self- defence.

The Square Baby is not particularly attracted by the poultry as a whole, save when it is boiled with bacon or roasted with bread-sauce; but he is much interested in the "invaleeds." Whenever Phoebe and I start for the hospital with the tobacco-pills, the tin of paraffin, and the bottle of oil, he is very much in evidence. Perhaps he has a natural leaning toward the medical profession; at any rate, when pain and anguish wring the brow, he is in close attendance upon the ministering angels.

{Staggered and reeled: p98.jpg}

Now it is necessary for the physician to have practice as well as theory, so the Square Baby, being left to himself this afternoon, proceeded to perfect himself in some of the healing arts used by country pract.i.tioners.

{Caught her son red-handed: p99.jpg}

When discovered, he was seated in front of the wire-covered "run"

attached to a coop occupied by the youngest goslings. A couple of bottles and a box stood by his side, and I should think he had administered a cup of sweet oil, a pint of paraffin, and a quarter of a pound of tobacco during his clinic. He had used the remedies impartially, sometimes giving the paraffin internally and rubbing the patient's head with tobacco or oil, sometimes the reverse.

Several goslings leaned languidly against the netting, or supported themselves by the edge of the water-dish, while others staggered and reeled about with eyes half closed.