"The extent of my murders," I replied, "would be limited only by the
supply of burglars."
It does a fellow a lot of good, when he is just moving into the
responsibilities of a real citizen, to perform mental assassinations
like that. I piled up my dead and we passed on.
We found, by pushing another button, that the Consolidated Gas and
Electric Light Company had provided the chandeliers in both parlor and
dining room with as many globes as could be crowded into the set. The
man who put them in left them all turned on. We burned fully seven
cents' worth of watts before it occurred to us to limit the
incandescence by turning off a few globes. Then my wife got a mania for
economizing, and it was Uncle Henry on a high chair under every
individual set of lights, tickling the little flat black key things into
a subdued quiescence. We left one watt incubator in each set, with the
understanding that if company came we'd turn on the whole business and
average it up on the month by sitting as late as possible on the front
porch.
But there was one button that got me. It was in the front bedroom with
the double-mirror doors on the big closet. We pushed it and didn't hear
a thing. Logically, it ought to do something. I pushed again and
listened for the tinkle. My wife went upstairs and downstairs, while I
pushed, and every now and then I'd yell at her.
"Anything happening?"
"No," she would reply. "Push it real quickly and see if you can't take
it by surprise!"
I tried every method I could think of to make that push button earn its
existence. Every day since I've tried it, determined to learn what it
ought to do or die in the attempt. But to this day that push button is a
mystery.
The Adventure of the Reluctant Cow:
Billy Pentz wants to know if we will keep a bee at our house. We will
not. And another thing, I don't know why bees are kept in an apiary. I
cannot see the line of identification between bees and apes. Apes should
be kept in an apiary; bees should be kept in a beeswax.
But we have been thinking about a cow. There is a company cowary right
back of our house, and when the wind is from the south the call of the
diary is strong upon us. Pardon me, I should have written the dairy.
There's another digression. Why should the transportation of two letters
change a notebook into a milk foundry?
I watched William milking a cow in the cowary, and the ease with which
he performed what to me seemed no less than magic was simply astounding.
Sitting there as quietly as you please, on an inverted bucket, with an
uninverted bucket between his knees, he directed streams of embryo
butter and ice-cream and custard into the centre of a foaming pool with
no more concern than a Queen of the sixth century would show in knifing
a kneeling page.
"We will get a cow," I announced briefly, but with that masterful tone
that identifies me in any company.
My wife looked at me, the way some women look at some men. I withered
but held my ground.
"Why, you can't even milk a cow!" she said.
Now, I've never taken a dare from any woman. I hiked right back down the
patch, careless of the newly sown grass plots, and blundered into the
cowary.
"William," I said, "arise and hand me that can! I'm going to show you
how I used to milk when I was a cowboy!"
If this were fiction it would be funny, but it's fact; and many a thing
that's funny in fiction is tragedy in fact.
William handed me the bucket. I said, "So, Bossy," and seated myself
just as I had seen William do it, with my feet crossed and the bucket
between my knees. That it slipped the first time and slopped over my
trousers was merely an incident. After I'd managed a half-nelson grip
with my knee caps I grabbed a couple of the cow's depending
protuberances and squeezed. Nothing happened. I squeezed again and
pulled. A couple of drops trickled into the palms of my hands.
Encouraged, I tried a jiu-jitsu stunt designed to astonish the cow into
yielding to superior intelligence, and she looked around at me and
grinned.
I say that cow grinned. Some one once told me that among animals only
hyenas could grin. Then this cow was a hyena, that's all.
I tackled her again, shoving my head into her ribs after the manner of
certain yokels I had observed, as if there must be a secret spring to
push open the vents. William and the cow grinned a duet. I pulled and
pushed, twisted and tugged, coaxed and threatened, and finally I said
something to that cow that was uncouth.
Heaven forgive me for ever speaking rudely to a lady beef!
She lifted her near hind hoof and sent the bucket flying. Then she moved
over against me and mingled me with the soft sod. I got up and silently
handed William a quarter, winking the while to accent the hush. When I
went into the house I said:
"My dear, William informs me that the company may keep a cow around
here, but by the terms of our purchase we may not. It's a rank
discrimination, but I'm afraid we cannot have a cow. The Duke of Mont
Alto and the city ordinances will not permit it!"
The Adventure of the Nasty Little Fat Robin:
I don't know the botanical names of the birds around our house; in fact,
I am not sure that botany is the science of birds. But, at any rate, we
have half a dozen trees and each one is a choir loft. No wheezing
organ, with rattling foot pedals and thumping water-pump, disturbs the
clear harmonies of their music. No sonorous basso in the amen corner
growls out a flat profundo to insult the memory of Phoebe Carey; no
shrill tenor raises his chin until his Adam's apple sticks out like a
loose bung in a cider barrel, to shriek his blasphemy of divine music!
We have just the little birds, whose throats swell and swell until you
would think they must burst, and who sing their love-bugles through the
branches careless of their audience. Wonderful cadenzas chase each other
in a game of lyric tag, never wearying, never breaking. Trills that can
be written only in spirit composition--long notes that sometimes salute
a saint, sometimes absolve a sinner--sibilant sighs that bring up
memories--all these things we have in our choir, and upon them there is
no mortgage!
There's a nasty little fat robin outside our kitchen door, though, who
is some day going to meet disaster.
We feed the robins on crumbs, and throw them such little delicacies as
cracked marrow bones, chunks of suet and bits of sugar. When they have
finished eating they hurry to the end of the house, where there is
always a little water trickling out to make a bird fountain. (Item: I
must build a regular bird fountain.) This nasty little fat robin, who is
going straight into trouble, is a hog on wings. All the others will be
cheerfully setting about their dinner, when he will rush in, nibble a
single bite and then stand guard over the rest, to keep them from it. I
do not know whether to call him Rottenfeller for hogging it, or
Rosenfelt for fighting.
Now Kadott is my pet. I've called her Kadott for a little missionary
Japanese friend, who lives at Hadji Konak, and I wonder if the Japanese
at Hadji Konak will appreciate the honor? The one thing that makes me
fond of Kadott is that she is very much in love with me; but she annoys
me, too, because she makes me keep my distance and still coquettes. She
has an odd little trick of coming nearly to me, turning her head and
cocking her ear, as if to say:
"There is going to be a love scene, and I must beware of eavesdroppers."
Some of these days she will eat from my hand. But now she only comes
close and darts away at the first approach. She has built her nest and
she has the mother instinct. When she has hatched her little family I'm
going to be Uncle Henry to every one of them.
And that is what I've been trying to get to. If the nasty little fat
robin butts into Kadott's family relations, there will be a murder. My
hands will be red with the blood of a bandit.
When you come out to That House I Bought, stay all night and listen to
the birds in the early morning. It seems to me that a man who listens to
the birds in the right spirit ought to make a fairly decent citizen, in
time.