“Amanda! Amanda!”
With an apron over her head and a tin pail on her arm, Amanda had come
into view beyond the angle of the barn.
“She’s going to the strawberry-patch over beyond the orchard,” said
Clarence, excitedly. “Quick! Now, all together!”
Amanda had not the hardihood to ignore the resulting chorus of appeals
to her. But she passed quickly on out of sight, after turning long
enough to wave her hand and answer:—
“Jest be patient, you critters. Gabe’ll ’tend to you when he gits home.”
The colt nearly burst with indignation.
“That settles it,” he shrieked, lashing out with his heels so that there
was a great clatter of things loose in the barn. Then he drew back his
lips, baring his teeth, and began snapping at the latch-string of the
barn-door, which was just beyond his reach.
“It’s a pity,” said Mrs. Cowslip. “I’ve seen your mother let herself in
that way many a time, when she was full of grass and eager for her
midday nap.”
“If I was only out of here, I could reach that string,” grunted
Reginald, with one thought for the colt and two for himself.
“Oh, we know all about you,” retorted Clarence with exasperation. “If
you could get out you’d scoot for those artichokes down by the brook and
never look behind you, you fat, selfish, kink-tailed little beast.”
“Just you try me,” urged the pig, for he had great confidence in the
colt’s resources.
Once more their noses were close together, while Clarence instructed
them in the details of a desperate effort designed to gain freedom for
them all.
To contend with the smug incredulity of those millions of human kind who
spend their lives in little brick-and-mortar boxes set one on top of
another in long double rows is the fate of all chroniclers of the
important aspects of nature. But truth is mighty and will prevail. Let
us therefore proceed calmly with the facts.
When Clarence had repeated his instructions several times, Reginald gave
three sharp, intelligent grunts and ran straight to the barnyard gate.
With his stiffened snout he began furiously attacking the hard earth
beneath the lower bar.
“Not there, you idiot!” squealed the colt. “The other end. The other
end, where the iron hinges are!”
Reginald stood corrected. While the dirt flew from under the hinged end
of the gate, Gustavius galloped foolishly around the yard with his tail
aloft, and William, with a coolly calculating eye on those hinges,
backed away slowly, with significance understood by all the other
conspirators. Mrs. Cowslip looked on benignantly. Presently the pig got
his sturdy shoulders under the gate and heaved with all his might.
William, with head down, leaped to the assault. The crash of his horns
on those hinges reëchoed between orchard and wooded hills. But the gate
was raised only an inch or two, and Reginald stuck fast. His squeals as
he struggled would have melted a heart of stone. William backed away for
another assault. It was while he was in mid-air that Clarence shrilled:—
“Not the hinges! The pig, the pig!”
William understood. This time all the weight behind his horns landed
with a resounding smack on Reginald’s inviting posterior. In the midst
of heart-rending squeals the gate rose in the air and the barnyard
prisoners looked out on liberty. Instantly Reginald was off in the
direction of the artichokes.
“Stop!” shrieked Clarence. “As I’m a thoroughbred, you shall feel my
heels among your spareribs!”
Reginald looked back, and seeing immediate menace in the lowered horns
of Mrs. Cowslip and Gustavius, turned about, ran to the barn-door, stood
on his hind-legs, seized with his teeth the leather string at which the
colt was frantically snapping, gave one sharp pull—and the deed was
done. If Amanda, a moment later, had looked up from her
strawberry-picking, she would have seen, circling over the half-lawn,
half-pasture between the barn and the house, all tails in the air, a
triumphant procession consisting of one yearling colt, one cow with a
crumpled horn, one bull-calf, one he-goat making short stiff-legged
jumps with horns lowered, and one pig bringing up the rear with a tail
now so tightly kinked that it lifted his hind-quarters clear of the
ground at every second leap.
But Amanda’s mind was glued on strawberries; and for the present other
matters of moment require us, too, to leave the escaped prisoners to
their own devices.
* * * * *
Half a mile away the Poet and his sister sat on a boulder beside the
road. It was a semi-public road winding around the foot of a wooded
hill. Behind them, a mile away, was the railway station. That mile had
been mostly uphill, and the Poet did not love physical exercise. He was
tall and lean, with a geometrical figure composed mainly of acute
angles. When in a state of repose, it resembled a carpenter’s pocket
rule which protested at being entirely shut up. The Poet’s sister, on
the contrary, was mainly curves—those delicate, subtle curves that deny
the presence of bones, yet repel any suggestion of fat. She was young;
not too young—just young enough to have won the crowning glory of
spinsterhood. She had quantities of red hair, the kind of red hair that
always goes with that astonishingly transparent skin underneath which
scattering amber freckles come and go over-night. There was one now on
the side of her nose, which had a becomingly mirthful tilt at the end.
Her lips were full at the centre, carmine, and with finely shaped
corners which could not by any possibility be drawn downward. She wore a
solid pair of calfskin boots, with military heels which looked small
while being ample in size. Her dark walking-skirt barely reached the
interesting spot where her bootlaces were tied. Her waist, of a soft,
cream-tinted material, left her neck and throat bare—for which the Lord
be praised!—and a shapeless, yet shapely, fluffy white thing resting on
the coils of her hair seemed to absorb warmth from them. In short, you
will make no mistake when you keep your mind fixed on the Poet’s sister.
“Just around the next turn of the road, George,” she was saying, “our
little summer Elysium will burst upon your view.”
The Poet mopped the long, solemn countenance that was belied by his eyes
and his manner of speech.
“Galatea, I have observed that most things elysian in this life are
generally just around the corner. I am not impatient. I can wait. In
fact, I should prefer to have that first view burst upon me while I am
comfortably seated in the spring wagon of—What did I understand you to
say the gentleman’s name was, Galatea?”
“He is called Gabe.”
“Doubtless a corruption of Gabriel. I wonder if Gabriel blows his
trumpet for breakfast?”
Galatea’s lips parted in a musical ripple of laughter. The sight would
have caused a dentist to pass on, with misgivings about his future. The
Poet merely remarked:—
“Galatea, are you sure we brought our toothbrushes?” Whereupon the
dentist would have been heartened by the sight of a tiny point of gold
shining out of the crown of her left bicuspid.
“George, you lazy thing, come on. It’s only half a mile further. Gabriel
probably missed us at the station, and has returned by the main road.”
“Oh, well, if all roads lead to Elysium, I suppose it’s no use waiting
here.”
Slowly the Poet’s angles adjusted themselves to the upright position,
and he strode on beside his sister.
“So you really like the place, Galatea?”
“It’s lovely—just the spot to give you inspiration, George. I shall
expect great things of you, dear.”
“Will it inspire me to reduce the rhythm of Anacreon to ragtime, do you
think?”
“O George! And there are the Professor’s pets, you know—Mrs. Cowslip,
Clarence, Reginald, Gustavius, and William. I told you about them. The
Professor has the most wonderful knack of understanding domestic animals
and making them understand him. Really, they look upon him as one of
themselves. The Professor says we do our domestic animal pets great
injustice when we overlook their loyalty and intelligence, refusing to
meet them half-way in friendly companionship. Why, with only a little
encouragement they develop the most remarkable emotions, almost human in
their complexity; while their powers of expression develop
correspondingly. Positively the Professor and his cow, and colt, and
pig, and bull-calf,—William the goat, Napoleon the dog, and Cleopatra
the mare were away the day I called to arrange about the lease for the
summer,—are just one big happy family.”
Galatea’s cheeks were flushed with enthusiasm. The Poet’s eyes twinkled,
but his face remained long and solemn.
“What name does the pig answer to?”
“Reginald; but he’s a nice, clean pig.”
“Yes, of course, being a member of the Professor’s family. By the way,
did you have an opportunity to note Reginald’s table manners?”
“O George, how perfectly absurd!”
“Not necessarily. I give way to no man in my determination to do justice
to my fellow creatures, irrespective of the number of legs with which
they are equipped. As the Professor has left us in undisputed possession
for the next six months, there’s no telling what we may accomplish. What
sort of voice has Reginald?”
“George, I shan’t tell you another thing!”
“There, there. It merely occurred to me that, as neither you nor I nor
Arthur sings—By the way, Galatea, I suppose Arthur will run over
occasionally in his new automobile, the lucky beggar?”
“I lay claim to no advance information respecting Arthur’s intentions,”
answered the Poet’s sister, in cool, even tones. The flapping brim of
her headgear was between the Poet’s eyes and her cheek, suddenly turned
pink.
“Oh, well, I was only thinking what a boon Arthur’s banjo and my guitar
would turn out to be if the pig should develop a romantic tenor voice.
By Jove, Galatea! If that’s the place, I apologize for everything.”
They had reached the turn of the road that overlooked their summer
Elysium. The Poet distributed his joints over another roadside boulder,
while Galatea stood by his side, and gave his attention to the charming
scene in detail.
“Really, a fine, rambling old house surrounded by shaded verandas below,
and not too near the road. A stone-walled inclosure of half a dozen
acres sloping down to a pretty brook that flows under the lower wall
just below the barn—a comfortable red barn; a barn that isn’t red is
only half a barn. A kitchen-garden and an orchard, and the rest pasture
that is neat enough for a lawn. What romps we shall have, Galatea, with
the colt and the bull-calf! What’s that vine-covered affair reared
against the west gable of the house? Oh, a water-tank. Just so; there’s
a pipe connecting underground with the brook, and that wind-wheel on the
barn roof does the pumping. Good! I anticipate the luxury of an
occasional tub. I was afraid Elysium was like Germany—lots of romance
and no bathtubs. Galatea, we shall do—we shall do beautifully. But I
say, what’s that funny-looking thing on the peak of the house roof?”
“Isn’t it the chimney?”
“It looks to me like a saw-horse.”
They walked on. After passing through a grove of chestnuts, they had a
nearer and better view of the house.
“No, it isn’t a saw-horse,” said the Poet. “It moves. Did you see it?”
Galatea looked embarrassed.
“Galatea, the thing on our roof looks to me uncommonly like a
billy-goat. Galatea, it _is_ a billy-goat—I can make out his whiskers.”
“Yes,” Galatea admitted reluctantly, “it must be William.”
“Very well, I foresee trouble for William. I am quite willing to
collaborate with the Professor and take William to my bosom on equal
terms as a brother, but no billy-goat shall be the man higher up in _my_
family. William has got to get down off that roof.”
Presently they turned in at the gate—and then the Poet doubled up like a
jack-knife. Galatea plumped down on the grass and laughed till she
cried. A nice clean fat pig, with a sort of Elizabethan ruffle about his
neck, raised himself on his forelegs and sat at a little distance from
Galatea, grunting mild inquiries respecting the object of her call. The
ruffle was explained by the presence of several other articles of
feminine wearing apparel scattered about on the grass, evidently
undergoing the bleaching process. In making a selection for his own
adornment, the pig had not been quite discreet. A sleek and motherly
cow, with one crumpled horn, lay in the soft earth of a tulip-bed,
chewing her cud. Her total lack of humor was manifest in the complacent
glances which she bestowed upon her offspring, a reckless-looking
bull-calf, which wore a peach-basket unnecessarily on one of his
hind-legs. This scene of domestic contentment was further enhanced when
a saucy yearling colt put his head out through the kitchen window and
shook it knowingly at the intruders, as much as to say:—
“Go away, strangers. _We_ are at home, and _you_ ought to be.”
And then the colt, the cow, the bull-calf, the pig wearing the
improvised ruffle, and the goat from his perch on the roof, united in a
glance of intense astonishment at the girl seated on the grass. Why was
she swaying her body up and down in that foolish fashion, while her
hands beat the air aimlessly and her throat emitted incomprehensible
gurgles, like the bull-calf with a turnip stuck in his gullet?
“Oh dear, oh dear!” choked Galatea. “Amanda’s stepped out somewhere, and
Bos, Equus and Co. are in full charge. The cow chewing her cud in the
tulip-bed—oh dear, oh dear! The bull-calf picking up stray
peach-baskets, and the colt in the kitchen—oh dear, oh dear! The pig
wearing one of Amanda’s—ha! ha! he! he!—one of Amanda’s newest aramatums
for a collar! Slap me on the back, George; I shall die—oh dear, oh dear!
And the goat overlooking things from the roof! Come and fan me, George.
Oh dear, oh dear!”
But the Poet had recovered his accustomed solemnity of visage. He stood
with arms folded, contemplating the goat.
“Bos, Equus and Co. are plainly within their rights,” he said,
“excepting the goat. The roof of our house is not a proper place for any
member of our family, two-legged or otherwise. William, come down from
there!”