第18章 CHAPTER XI(2)

Just as we were passing out the door we paused to hear the report of a special committee whose chairman read the following resolutions:-WHEREAS,--It has pleased the Almighty to remove from our midst our greatest Rose Comb Buff Orpington fancier and esteemed friend, Albert Edward Sheridain; therefore be it RESOLVED,--That the next edition of our catalogue contain an illustrated memorial page in his honour and RESOLVED,--That the Rose Comb Buff Orpington Club extend to the bereaved family their heartfelt sympathy.

The handsome young farmer followed us out to our trap, invited us to attend the next meeting of the R. C. B. O. Club, of which he was the secretary, and asked if I were intending to "show." I introduced Phoebe as the senior partner, and she concealed the fact that we possessed but one Buff Orpington, and he was a sad "invaleed" not suitable for exhibition. The farmer's expression as he looked at me was almost lover-like, and when he pressed a bit of paper into my hand I was sure it must be an offer of marriage. It was in fact only a circular describing the Banner Bone Breaker. It closed with an appeal to Buff Orpington breeders to raise and ever raise the standard, bidding them remember, in the midst of a low- minded and sordid civilisation, that the rose comb should be small and neat, firmly set on, with good working, a nice spike at the back lying well down to head, and never, under any circumstances, never sticking up. This adjuration somewhat alarmed us as Phoebe and I had been giving our Buff Orpington cockerel the most drastic remedies for his languid and prostrate comb.

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 thorniest 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"!"

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!