THE HEN-WIFE
"When I was a farmer, a farmer's boy, I used to keep my master's
chickens..."--NURSERY SONG.
At the close of a day largely devoted to the task concerning Blossom,
the cart, and the mangolds, I came up to the farmhouse to get their
second feed for Mrs. Price's chickens. Of these she had eighty, and
I know she set great store by them. She well might! The hens, I
heard, cost ten shillings each; one speckled grey cockerel was a
guinea!
Some of the hens with their brood clucked about that midden in the
yard to which I'd added by several barrow-loads; the rest were in a
field that sloped quite steeply up the hill. I had fed the first lot
in the yard; I had ascended the hill to the field with the coops
dotted about it, and I had shut a brood of restless, fluffy,
"peep"-ing chicks into the coop for them to feed undisturbed by their
marauding grown-ups, when suddenly there brushed against my leggings
the fluffy white-and-golden coat of Captain Holiday's collie.
"Tock, tock, tock!" called the hens about me. And, above me, I heard
the captain's "Good afternoon."
I rose, straightened myself from putting down the wire door of that
coop, and turned to face him.
A little shock of surprise met me with the sight of him. He
was--different. What had he done to himself? I wondered in a
flash--in the same flash I realized that it was merely his clothes.
For the first time since I'd met him Captain Holiday had changed out
of his accustomed khaki. He was wearing tweeds. A hat that might
have done duty on a scarecrow, with a fishing-cast about it, shaded
his eyes from the late afternoon sun. His Norfolk jacket was a
shaggy, grey-green disgrace to a gipsy's wardrobe ... but it suited
him quite well. I wondered why he had never worn these things before.
After this I found myself thinking that I must have seen him in
tweeds before now.
Wasn't his figure somehow very familiar---- But no. How could that
be?
"Good afternoon," I replied to him in the tone that may be
translated, "What do you want now?"
As if in answer, he held out to me the tin pail that he was carrying.
With his sweetest smile he barked out, "Rotten careless hen-wife
you'd make! I had to bring this along to save Mrs. Price a journey.
You forgot the milk to put in the chicks' tins."
"Did I!" I exclaimed, disconcerted. "That was stupid of me!"
"It was," retorted Captain Holiday, still with the smile that might
have accompanied the prettiest compliment. Characteristic!
I scarcely looked at him, hoping that he'd go.
He did not. He seemed to expect me to have something to say to
him--at all events, he stayed while I filled up those milk pannikins,
and followed me round to the other coops.
I said, looking away from him, and with would-be irony:
"You seem as interested in poultry as in the rest of farming."
"Yes," he agreed. "I've always been interested in pottering about
with stock of any kind. Always the job I fancied; 'always my
delight,' as they say here; so----" He broke off. "What are you
looking at?" he asked abruptly. "A penny for your thoughts."
I was looking up beyond the tall, slight figure set against the
background of slanting field and stone hedge cutting a purply-grey
sky. That part of Mr. Price's farm reminded me of a bit of the old
place at home.
How typically Welsh were the hilly green and the grey stones, and the
rich shifting colours of the cloudy distance! These brought back to
me my Welsh-set childhood.
* * * * * * *
Days of wandering the marshes, waist-deep in meadow-sweet and bog
myrtle, dreaming the long, long dreams of little girlhood! Days of
sitting curled up like a squirrel in the school-room armchair while
the rain lashed the panes and all the world of Every-day was blotted
out as I pored over Shakespere, or "Called Back" or "The Last Days of
Pompeii" or "Three Men in a Boat"--ah, the omnivorous and profoundly
satisfying reading of the early teens! Meals that to a growing girl
were banquets of Welsh mutton and jam roly-poly ... tea-parties that
were events ... jokes that brought laughter that brought tears to
stream down the cheeks convulsed ... quick fierce likes and dislikes
... shames ... delights--ah, over all, delight! Zest in the newness
of Life! How many of these things had I left behind in those
days-gone-by!
With a breath of the old wild mountain air, fresh and bewildering,
bringing unreasoned tears to the eyes, those days were back, for that
moment I felt the thick brown pigtail weigh upon my neck as I bent my
face down to the face of the whimpering fox terrier pup in my arms.
That pup had been given to me by one of my father's farm pupils seven
years ago. I was back in that time.
Into my day dream broke a voice that seemed, for a second, part of it.
"A penny for your thoughts!"
* * * * * * *
With a start I palled myself together, glancing now straight at the
young man. How strange--yet how well known to me, he seemed! Why?
The thought persisted; why? Of what did he remind me so elusively at
this moment?
Then an extraordinary thing happened.
I do not know how it was that I said what I did--those five quite
unpremeditated words. My voice sounded odd in my own ears as I
spoke. Yet it was quite in a normal matter-of-fact voice that I did
speak. Standing there on the hill slope where the black and the grey
speckled poultry clucked about our feet, I looked up at the young man
again and asked him this question:
"Isn't your name Richard Wynn?"