Part 2

“... a loose board, lifted every now and then by the unringed snout of a very good old sow. Pure curiosity was her motive, and no evil appetite, as her eyes might tell. She had never seen a fellow and a tutor of a college rolling, as she herself longed to do; and yet in a comparatively clumsy way. She grunted deep disapprovement of his movements, and was vexed that her instructions were so entirely thrown away.”

Here is a picture of a little child, seen through his hole by the distracted tutor:

“A little child toddled to the wicket gate and laid fat arms against it, and laboured, with impatient grunts, to push it open.... He gazed with his whole might at this little peg of a body, in the distance toppling forward, and throwing out behind the whole weight of its great efforts.... This little peg, now in battle with the gate, was a solid Peg in earnest; a fine little Cripps, about five years old, as firm as if just turned out of a churn. She was backward in speech, as all the little Crippses are; and she rather stared forth her ideas than spoke them. But still, let her once get a settlement concerning a thing that must be done to carry out her own ideas, and in her face it might be seen, once for all, that stop she never would till her own self had done it....

“Taught by adversity (the gate had banged her chubby knees, etc.) she did thus: Against the gatepost she settled her most substantial availability, and exerted it, and spared not. Therewith she raised one solid leg, and spread the naked foot thereof, while her lips were firm as any toe of all the lot, against the vile thing that had knocked her about, and the power that was contradicting her. Nothing could withstand this fixed resolution of one of the far more resolute moiety of humanity. With a creak of surrender the gate gave back; and out came little Peggy Cripps, with a broad face glowing with triumph.”

I have told you of Dobbin; I suppose I mustn’t detain you to hear about Lawyer Sharp’s horse? “A better disposed horse was never foaled; and possibly none—setting Dobbin aside, as the premier and quite unapproachable type—who took a clearer view of his duties to the provider of corn, hay, and straw, and was more ready to face and undergo all proper responsibilities.... He cannot fairly be blamed, and not a pound should be deducted from his warrantable value, simply because he did what any other young horse in the world would have thought to be right. He stared all round to ask what was coming next, he tugged on the bridle, with his fore feet out, as a leverage against injustice, and his hind legs spread wide apart, like a merry thought, ready to hop anywhere.” Later he made for Oxford, “where he thought of his oat sieve smelling sweetly, and nice little nibbles at his clover hay, and the comfortable soothing of his creased places by a man who would sing a tune to him.”

One of the charms of the book is that it will make you a nuisance to your family; there are so many pictures that you simply must read them, so many phrases they must taste with you, and everything that you do quote seems to be capped and improved upon by something a little further on, and you simply must venture it.

Not a thing does he miss, from ruts (oh, that pæan on ruts! “Everything here was favourable to the very finest growth of ruts. The road had once been made, which is a necessary condition of any masterpiece of rut work; it had then been left to maintain itself, which encourages wholesome development....”) to the effects of a hard frost, the borings of the Sirex Gigas, and the tufted undergrad. who tools the “Flying Dutchman” up the streets of Oxford. And nothing would we have him miss.

How can I let my dear friend Richard Blackmore, with his chuckling gossip about Worth Oglander and Grace, Cripps, and the rustics of Oxford and Beckley, fade out of memory on Petunia shelves?

The Hypnotist

The Round of Gaiety continues. We have just lived through a Sunday School anniversary (with tea meeting), a visit from _the_ hypnotist, and the Show.

The Hobbledehoy (latterly known as Hob) wrote that his father must go to the hypnotic entertainment. He had been with some of the boys from College, and the sight of a respectable schoolmaster under the delusion that he was assisting at a dogfight left him without words to express his joy. On hearing that our new man, Fat Bill Boundy, who has the face of a natural comedian, meant to submit himself for experiment, Joshua decided that a little amusement would cheer Marjorie up, and of course he accompanied her.

Admission turned out to be 2s. 4d. and 3s. 6d.

“But the advertisement said ‘Popular Prices,’” protested Joshua.

“That’s right,” agreed the ticket man, smoothly, “popular with the entertainer.”

Joshua says that this was the only joke of the evening. Bill Boundy went up on to the platform all right, but the Great Man only made him twiddle his fingers and roll his eyes. He said that on this occasion he was “mesmerizing but not hypnotizing.” Joshua sat up half the night with Jack’s Reference Book and the Encyclopædia Britannica, trying to find out the difference. It appears that it consists in the size of the town in which the performance is given.

Tin Lizzie

Our minister bought a “Tin Lizzie”—at least, I’m afraid he passed it off with the old, old joke, “We’ll have a Ford now, and a motor after the war.” But Tin Lizzie worked harder than any horse, and our minister was well satisfied—except when he forgot to water her, or crank her, or in some way misunderstood her internal organs; and then he called her “The Pesky Thing,” and even went so far as to say—I mean, of course, to _think_—“Dash it.”

But a time came when the Pesky Thing had to be cleaned, and oiled, and crawled over, and squirmed under, and taken to pieces, and—and—sermonized over. And our minister was a persevering man, and so were his friends; and they talked and thought and read motors, and captured the local mechanic and a passing amateur and an expert; and finally they got her to go—a little way. Wherefore on Saturday night the minister went to bed happy.

But all the same he had a dream, a nightmare, a hair-raising, heart-stopping nightmare. He dreamed that he was _walking_ to church when he noticed his boots—and they were his motor-cleaning boots, scraped on the heels and worn at the toes and cracked all over. But he was not dismayed; the pulpit would hide them.

And yet a little way, and lo, he had on his head the cap, the greasy, poacher’s cap that protected his clerical hairs from the motor-drippings.

“But I can pocket my cap,” this imperturbable man comforted himself.

And yet a little further, and it was his coat, his shapeless, sagging, grimy motor-coat.... And now he really was put out, for, as he foresaw,

“I shall have on those trousers in a few minutes!”

And when at last he got to church the sense of doom was upon him, and when he gave out the hymn the organ was out of order.

And they took it to pieces, and cleaned it, and oiled it, and climbed over it and crawled under it....

“Now I see that all things work together for good,” dreamed our minister (he was ever an optimist), “_for I’ve got the right togs on for the job_.”

The Show

During the strike our railway supported only three trains a week; for the Show it surpassed itself and ran three on one day, or, rather, two and a dog-box. But they were all full, and I do think the crowd enjoyed itself, or at any rate Marjorie’s prize cake and cream puffs, which were carried off surreptitiously. Joshua says that the judging was very unsatisfactory. His two-tooth did not get a prize. Marjorie, on the other hand, considers that in the cooking and dairy sections the most exemplary fairness was shown.

In the general excitement of meeting Pete Wigglesby, whom we haven’t seen for years, Joshua gave his order for a milking machine, although the drought has set in again. Marjorie wishes he would want to show off to some other old friend, and order a new house. “One without cement floors, and with no step down into the kitchen,” she says, plaintively. “And with a bathroom,” puts in Hob.

Peterborough Show comes next, and I fancy our men will mob it. For one thing, it is such a good opportunity to get their hair cut. You see, we are short of barbers in Petunia, and any excursions are eagerly seized. When the District Schools Picnic was held at Glenelg there were queues outside the hairdressers there till late in the afternoon, and it was considered that the managers of our fair made a great _coup_ when they ran a saloon as a sideshow. By the end of the evening Dicky Conlon was getting to be quite an expert hair-cutter. There was a little disturbance when Joe Wickhams saw himself in the glass, but Constable Merritt knocked the razor out of his hand and pulled him off Dicky. After that it was all right, because some one had the presence of mind to take away the mirror.

The Haircut

Joshua couldn’t go to Peterborough Show after all, and his hair was awful. Marjorie “could not foresee to what lengths it would go,” and advised him to wear it in curling-pins. Joshua begged her to try what she could do with a basin, and finally persuaded her to take a comb and scissors and “put the reaper into the crop.” Of course, the machine had to go over it several times, but at last only the stubble remained. She had some difficulty in getting the furrows on one side to meet those on the other, but finally the terrace effect was complete. Windy corner, where the roads meet on top, was a difficult point to negotiate, and Vimy Ridge took some levelling. The razor-work was particularly fine, and Joshua deserves the V.C. Marjorie was rather dashed by her failure to sell him a bottle of hair-restorer; she urged that it might help check the growth.

Scipio

Daisy is still after a pet whose usefulness she can justify as a potential mouse-catcher, but our disappointment with the Duchess has made us humbler and more discreet. This time we asked a neighbour for the gift of his apparently superfluous black kitten.

“’Taint mine,” said he; “it belongs to my old Nosey. She had it in the haystack, and I have never been able to catch it to drown it. If you can get it you can have it.”

“We shan’t find any difficulty with Scipio,” exulted the Hobbledehoy, home for “month out,” “because no one has been feeding him.”

“Scipio?” I asked.

“The black kitten,” he explained. “What they used to call the little niggers. Good name for a gutter-snipe.”

Well, we certainly have no difficulty in getting Scipio into the neighbourhood of nourishment. He (and Nosey his mother, and Miss Perkins his aunt, and the Yellow Peril from up the road) will scud across two paddocks at the sound of our call. At twenty paces, however, Scipio becomes coy. He rubs himself ingratiatingly against his mother, he sniffs towards the food, but won’t be wheedled. He may daringly sneak up within six feet to snatch a piece of meat, but he runs off again growling and sticks a paw on it, and turns his eyes towards us, flattening his ears while he eats. By the exercise of great patience and by throwing bits of meat at lessening distances he has even learned to snatch the meat from Daisy’s hand, to eat it without moving far, to—no, not to be stroked! At the first touch on his fur he darts to the gate, brings up, turns round, a little ashamed of his fright as he hears Daisy’s cooing voice—or, perhaps, still a little hungry!—and stands ready for flight, his tail gallantly up, though, and twitching his muscles confidingly, so that the fur ripples up and down his back in the sunlight. He fixes us with his blue eyes, that are already turning green at the edges, starts forward, checks—and that is as far as we can get with the adopting of Scipio. Poor little gutter-snipe! We shall never tame him. He can’t believe in human kindness. The only love he trusts is the warm touch of his mother, and she will cast him off soon, and his kittenhood will be over. Scipio will live as he can on pickings from rubbish heaps and mice in the haystacks and birds in the hedge. But it is Daisy who will be unhappy about it, not Scipio! Luckily, cats are not introspective.

Bill Boundy

Have I told you about our Bill Boundy? I have a rooted conviction that for a good many people music is simply a noise that they hope will soon stop. The reason why people will hardly ever confess to being unmusical is probably Shakespeare’s unfortunate remark:

“The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.”

To me it seems very hard that people should be under a cloud simply because of some defect in their organs of Corti, or some other part of the physical apparatus for hearing the exquisiteness of tune in sound. However, Bill Boundy is undoubtedly musical. He could lean against the wall all day listening to Hob practising. “It makes the skin of my head run tight,” he says, ecstatically and in apology, when Joshua motions him stablewards.

Bill is a treasure. I hope Joshua will never sack him irrevocably. He had “a week home to Munta” for Christmas, and is simply bursting with conversation. Most of his anecdotes turn upon his mother, a salty old Cornishwoman. She is a pensioner, but quite properly expects as much courtesy from the officials as if she were any other member of the public.

“I be waiting, my son,” was her gentle reminder through the post office window to the negligent back of “some young Jack-a-napes.” The new clerk took no notice.

“Didn’t ’ee hear, son? I be standing.”

“No son of yours,” snapped the sensitive youth.

“Must be somebody’s son,” urged the old lady, calmly, “unless ’ee come out of incubator.”

Jack-in-Office is now quite briskly attentive to Bill Boundy’s mother.

Bill is filled with admiration and a little malice because John Thomas Trellagan’s boy has just qualified as a doctor.

“Fair set up about it, John Tummas be. ‘Rayther young, John,’ says I. ‘Shouldn’t like him monkeying with my innards, ’a believe.’ ‘Aw,’ says John Tummas, a terrible obliging man, ‘they only practise on quite young children at first, ’a believe.’”

Joshua says Bill is “an ingratiating beggar.” Relations were strained because Bill hadn’t got the milking machine clean in time, but while they speeded up Bill wheedled Joshua into a good temper. He told him another story of John Tummas Trellagan’s boy. He has had his first maternity case. The mother and child are in a bad way, says Bill, but Clarence still hopes to save the father.

Bill always knows all that goes on in the township. Now that paper and string cost so much those who forget to take a cloth for their bread have to pay a halfpenny extra. Bill was there when the butcher took his revenge by charging the baker’s little messenger for the paper he wrapped the dog’s meat in. Thank goodness, everyone in Petunia can take a joke.

An Angry Man

I had chosen “Mary Barton” because Mrs. Gaskell wrote it, and “Joan and Peter” because no blue stocking with a care for her reputation can afford to admit ignorance of whatever book happens to be Wells’s penultimate, (or at any rate ante-penultimate), and I felt that I deserved some champagne after this solid-looking fare. I looked round the shelves gloomily, despairing of finding anything frivolous in the scanty stock from which in Petunia we draw for our week’s entertainment. “Pickwick Papers”—delightful, but too old a friend. “Three Men in a Boat”—also past its first youth. “Galahad Jones”—the very best of its kind, but then we only returned it last week. “Fatima”—um-m. Well, it had the plain cover of a self-respecting publisher; good print, plenty of conversation, titled folk, a yacht. It sounded frivolous enough. I took it.

I do not regret my choice, though my pleasure was scarcely due to the writer. There is no need to tell you the story. It was about a French-Arabian young lady dressed in a burnous (yes!) and coins, who married a tuberculous Scotch peer, and fell out with a deep-dyed villain (also of the peerage), and loved a doctor, the Bayard of his profession and the saintliest scientist who ever fell into the devilish hands of Arabian bandits agitating (apparently) for the eight hour day, only to be rescued by the lady in the burnous. No, the fun was not in the story, entertaining as its author’s luxurious enjoyment of herself undoubtedly was; the fun was entirely due to reading in the wake of an angry man with a pencil, who took the whole thing seriously.

He began on the first page. “A baronet would not be called ‘Lord,’” he reproves mildly. You could see his feeling; purely irritation with the printers. But as the story progressed it became clear that it was not the compositor who was at fault. “The authoress evidently does not understand titles,” he snarls. “Earl Harben would not be referred to as ‘Lord Eric.’” He slashes his pencil through “the Lady Eric,” and bang goes “her grace.” Fury nearly obliterates the “gh” in “straightened circumstances.” Next he reasons with the misguided person who has been adjudged worthy of the dignity of print (my own idea is that a doting husband paid for the whole thing himself). “Not a burgomaster _and_ a maire,” he pleads; “not in the same town. One is German, the other French.” Other anomalies he passes with a mere flick of the pencil, an exasperated sniff, as it were. I stuck to the yarn solely for the pleasure of savouring his hot fury, his cold despair, his pleading, his rage.

“The Presbyterians”—the infuriated man nearly dug through the page—“do not pray for the dead.”

And then came the (for me) sad page whereafter comment ceased. He had pounced on an exotic phrase.

“Pure Yankee!” he exclaims, triumphantly, and all is forgiven. I parted from him with sorrow.

His conclusion was wrong, of course, as I could prove if I met him. No one ought to accuse an American woman of not understanding the British peerage!

Alcibiades

The pet problem is solved! A chum has presented Hob with a small black pup, and, as Hob found to his disgust that even Prefects can’t keep dogs at school, he brought him home at the Michaelmas holidays.

“What is his name?” demanded Daisy.

“The Dam Dog,” replied Hob.

“What!” ejaculated Marjorie.

“The Dam Dog. Oh, it’s all right, mother. It means ‘dog that washes in a dam.’ D.A.M., you know.”

“Thank you, Hob. I know you go to college, but I can spell ‘dam’ myself—both ways. You must find some other name for your dog.”

The little fellow kept us all awake the night Hob left, and Joshua remarked in the morning that he thought Marjorie might now be more willing to let the name stand. However, Hob wrote to say that he had decided upon Alcibiades.

This time it was Joshua who put his foot down. He said that, if ever the time should come (which he doubted) when the dog was useful with sheep he was not going to make a fool of himself by shouting “Alcibiades.”

So now “his name is Alcibiades,” as Daisy explains, “but we call him Peter.”

Peter is a lovable little chap. He barks, prances, pounces, worries, with all the energy possible to a little barrel-shaped body that has only just ceased to wobble when it walks. Yesterday the police-constable called with news of our missing cow. Peter took the opportunity to bite his trousers and pull his boot laces, and then rolled over and over in an ecstacy of self-importance.

News

Don’t apologize for sending “no news, only views, blended with a cold in the head.” I never can see why letters should be newsy.

“There is nothing to write about; I am not doing anything,” people say. But if they are not doing they are thinking, and our thoughts are often more interesting to our friends than events, which very likely have little connection with ourselves at all. I’ve an idea that the best correspondents, like the best essay writers, are the egoists.

I am not one of the best letter-writers, however. In fact, I feel distinctly newsy. There is always something going on in Petunia. For instance, some more of our boys have returned from the war. We were pleased! A turkey was dressed in honour of one, and then the date of arrival was several times postponed. The problem of problems is—how long will a turkey keep even in (home-made) cold storage this weather? Any little unusual smell was greeted anxiously with, “I hope that isn’t the turkey!”

Twocott gave a strawberry fête and magic lantern in honour of its soldiers, only the strawberries didn’t come, and the lantern was missing. Still, the evening was a great success; there was so much more time to talk and play.

But the policeman’s wife has had the most excitement. Her husband was away, and she was awakened by strange noises. At first she thought it was smothered laughter, and then she thought it was curses (not smothered); presently there was a crash and a groan. In the shadow of the lane opposite a writhing mass of men bore something stealthily into the darkness. Our policeman’s wife is a heroine. She resolved not to desert the children, and buried her head in the bedclothes. In the morning Mrs. Odgers, coming over to borrow some dripping, was full of the kindness of the men who had moved the piano into her new house on their way home from the political meeting at Buxton.

Amusing Daisy

I do wish all girls took a course of home nursing. I’ve been nursing Daisy with one hand and reading up the subject with the other, so to speak. I can now sponge the patient with almost no exertion to her and without letting her get cold, at least, not very; and I can change the sheets without moving her from the bed. When Daisy gets better perhaps Marjorie or Joshua will give me a turn, just so that I can perfect my art. Daisy liked the cap I wore to protect my hair; it decided her to be a nurse herself some day. But the best subject for amusing the restless little soul was Peter—well, then, Alcibiades. I told Joshua about the beautiful echo that would reverberate “over the downs” if he called “Alcibiades,” but he said life was too short for elocutionary exercises while you round up sheep. “You mean your temper is too short,” observed Marjorie very justly.