第21章 CHAPTER XIV(1)

July 18th.

The day was Friday; Phoebe's day to go to Buffington with eggs and chickens and rabbits; her day to solicit orders for ducklings and goslings. The village cart was ready in the stable; Mr. and Mrs.

Heaven were in Woodmucket; I was eating my breakfast (which I remember was an egg and a rasher) when Phoebe came in, a figure of woe.

The Square Baby was ill, very ill, and would not permit her to leave him and go to market. Would I look at him? For he must have dowsed 'imself as well as the goslings yesterday; anyways he was strong of paraffin and tobacco, though he 'ad 'ad a good barth.

I prescribed for Albert Edward, who was as uncomfortable and feverish as any little sinner in the county of Sussex, and I then promptly proposed going to Buffington in Phoebe's place.

She did not think it at all proper, and said that, notwithstanding my cotton gown and sailor hat, I looked quite, quite the lydy, and it would never do.

"I cannot get any new orders," said I, "but I can certainly leave the rabbits and eggs at the customary places. I know Argent's Dining Parlours, and Songhurst's Tea Rooms, and the Six Bells Inn, as well as you do."

So, donning a pair of Phoebe's large white cotton gloves with open- work wrists (than which I always fancy there is no one article that so disguises the perfect lydy), I set out upon my travels, upborne by a lively sense of amusement that was at least equal to my feeling that I was doing Phoebe Heaven a good turn.

Prices in dressed poultry were fluctuating, but I had a copy of The Trade Review, issued that very day, and was able to get some idea of values and the state of the market as I jogged along. The general movement, I learned, was moderate and of a "selective" character. Choice large capons and ducks were in steady demand, but I blushed for my profession when I read that roasting chickens were running coarse, staggy, and of irregular value. Old hens were held firmly at sixpence, and it is my experience that they always have to be, at whatever price. Geese were plenty, dull, and weak.

Old cocks,--why don't they say roosters?--declined to threepence ha'penny on Thursday in sympathy with fowls,--and who shall say that chivalry is dead? Turkeys were a trifle steadier, and there was a speculative movement in limed eggs. All this was illuminating, and I only wished I were quite certain whether the sympathetic old roosters were threepence ha'penny apiece, or a pound.

Everything happened as it should, on this first business journey of my life, which is equivalent to saying that nothing happened at all. Songhurst's Tea Rooms took five dozen eggs and told me to bring six dozen the next week. Argent's Dining Parlours purchased three pairs of chickens and four rabbits. The Six Bells found the last poultry somewhat tough and tasteless; whereupon I said that our orders were more than we could possibly fill, still I hoped we could go on "selling them," as we never liked to part with old customers, no matter how many new ones there were. Privately, I understood the complaint only too well, for I knew the fowls in question very intimately. Two of them were the runaway rooster and the gadabout hen that never wanted to go to bed with the others.

The third was Cannibal Ann. I should have expected them to be tough, but I cannot believe they were lacking in flavour.

The only troublesome feature of the trip was that Mrs. Sowerbutt's lodgers had suddenly left for London and she was unable to take the four rabbits as she had hoped; but as an offset to that piece of ill-fortune the Coke and Coal Yard and the Bicycle Repairing Rooms came out into the street, and, stepping up to the trap, requested regular weekly deliveries of eggs and chickens, and hoped that I would be able to bring them myself. And so, in a happy frame of mind, I turned out of the Buffington main street, and was jogging along homeward, when a very startling thing happened; namely, a whole verse of the Bailiff's Daughter of Islington:-"And as she went along the high road, The weather being hot and dry, She sat her down upon a green bank, And her true love came riding by."

That true lovers are given to riding by, in ballads, I know very well, but I hardly supposed they did so in real life, especially when every precaution had been taken to avert such a catastrophe.

I had told the Barbury Green postmistress, on the morning of my arrival, not to give the Thornycroft address to anybody whatsoever, but finding, as the days passed, that no one was bold enough or sensible enough to ask for it, I haughtily withdrew my prohibition.

About this time I began sending envelopes, carefully addressed in a feigned hand, to a certain person at the Oxenbridge Hydro. These envelopes contained no word of writing, but held, on one day, only a bit of down from a hen's breast, on another, a goose-quill, on another, a glossy tail-feather, on another, a grain of corn, and so on. These trifles were regarded by me not as degrading or unmaidenly hints and suggestions, but simply as tests of intelligence. Could a man receive tokens of this sort and fail to put two and two together? I feel that I might possibly support life with a domineering and autocratic husband,--and there is every prospect that I shall be called upon to do so,--but not with a stupid one. Suppose one were linked for ever to a man capable of asking,--"Did YOU send those feathers? . . . How was I to guess? .

. . How was a fellow to know they came from you? . . . What on earth could I suppose they meant? . . . What clue did they offer me as to your whereabouts? . . . Am I a Sherlock Holmes?"--No, better eternal celibacy than marriage with such a being!

These were the thoughts that had been coursing through my goose- girl mind while I had been selling dressed poultry, but in some way they had not prepared me for the appearance of the aforesaid true love.