Wanderfoot (The Dream Ship)

the last sentence the Cliff Farm enthusiasts possessed not the ungenerosity of soul to suspect it. Portraits of Black Langshans in the poultry book discovered them to be birds of a grace and elegance astonishing and the text declared them splendid layers of lovely pink eggs. The pink eggs decided the matter. Val flew to make out a list of all she would give in exchange. Provisions they had none, but she possessed clothes to spare in so good a cause. (1) A Liberty ball gown of old-gold satin. (2) A motor coat made by Paquin, with a great hood of orange velvet. (3) A pair of bronze evening shoes, embroidered with emerald butterflies. (4) A pair of old-paste buckles set in silver. "It seems a shame to send them," said Haidee, stroking the orange velvet hood, the dawn of femininity in her eye. "They 're so awfully nice. I 'm sure they 're worth more than a pen of Langshans, Val." "Yes, I know," said Val, gazing at the ball gown wistfully. "But where could I sell them, Haidee? One can't go hawking clothes for sale round Jersey. And we _must_ have the fowls and we _must n't_ spend Garry's money on experiments. Besides it is better to get rid of things like these, they only make one think of balls and motors and frivolous things that don't matter a bit." Haidee looked at her curiously. "Just fancy _you_ ever having gone to balls, Val--and ridden in motors! I would never have believed it! I can't think of you in anything else but your big grey overall aprons." Val flushed painfully. The grey overalls were a concomitant feature of life in New York only, but Haidee was not to know that. "At any rate we 'll send the things. Now let us see what we can dig out in exchange for this pair of Belgian hares--they say they are the best kind for increasing and marketing. Oh, Haidee! perhaps we shall be able to make quite a lot of money!" If they did not it would not be the fault of either of them, for they threw themselves heart and soul into the affairs of the farm. Val fed the fowls at early dawn, made hot mashes for them on cold mornings, cleaned out nests perpetually, ground up old china to make grit, and set broody hens on several dozen eggs, so as to have chickens ready for the spring markets. There was nothing she and Haidee disdained to do. On cold winter nights when Bran was asleep they would sit curled over the fire calculating the fortunes they were going to make out of their chickens and computing the large sums that would presently come rolling in when the breeding pen was in full swing, the spring chickens hatched, and all the hens laying simultaneously. To make money at poultry farming seemed as easy as rolling off a log. "It will be almost a shame to give it up," said Val, with brooding eyes. "A paying concern like this! When the time comes for us to go back to America we shall have to instal some one to take charge. We may even some day be able to buy the farm out of our profits, Haidee! If we do, it shall be yours and Bran's, because you work like a little brick at it." "I shall then buy up Scone's field and go in for Plymouth Rocks and Faverolles only," announced Haidee. (Scone was their nearest neighbour, a farmer whose land adjoined their own.) This was their method of calculation. "We have fifty hens now: six broody hens are sitting on twelve eggs, and when they hatch out we shall have seventy-two chickens; fifty of those we will fatten and send to market at half-a-crown each (that will bring us in six pounds). The other twenty-two we will keep for laying purposes next year; added to the fifty hens we now have that will make seventy-two hens laying eggs, which we will sell for at least a shilling per dozen." It seemed a shame to take the people's money! The spell of hens was on them. When at last a few chickens of shamefully mongrel breed were hatched out, they might have been offspring of the dodo from the way the family crooned and gloated over them, warming them at the fireside, feeding them with wonderful concoctions, sitting in the open yard for hours to watch their antics. The ways of the elder hens also enchanted them, and each of the fifty had a Christian name bestowed by reason of some peculiar charm or quality. There were: Grey Lady, Eagle, Crooktail, Favvy, Blind Eye, Johannesburg Moll, Flirt, Long Tom, Felix, and The Lady with the Fan, etc. The rabbits too were spell-binders. Two respective litters were heartlessly gobbled and mutilated by does driven off their mental reservation by the sight of human beings fondling their new-born offspring. After the occurrence of these horrible tragedies, a book on rabbit-rearing was bought, and the knowledge acquired that rabbit babies should not be touched or even looked at until they creep from the hutch and show themselves. As a result of this information later litters were successful, and during the winter there were wonderful wet nights when dozens of tiny rabbits were brought for the sake of warmth and dryness into the kitchen, and the furry things with their bright wild ways popped and gambolled to the sheer delight of every one--until the morning came with the business of cleaning up after the circus! The first disappointment came with the arrival of the prize-pen of Black Langshans. Their rectory home was in Hampshire, so the railway journey had not been long, but the sea-voyage appeared to have affected their health. They staggered forth from the battered poultry basket--four old black hags of hens, bulky and bleary as washerwomen, hoary of ear and scaly of leg, followed by a tall slender cock more like a phantom ostrich than a fancier's bird. He had a wild, red eye, and appeared to be suffering from a mysterious affliction in the legs, which caused him to fall fainting at every few steps he made. Haidee cheerfully dosed him with the peppercorns which were left over from the time when the chickens had pip. But nothing could rouse him from his Hamlet-like melancholy. The hens must have been at least five years old, but happily, neither Val nor Haidee knew enough about the outward signs and symbols of fowl age to realise the trick that had been played upon them. Only, it dawned upon them slowly in the long months to come that they need never expect pink eggs from the grandmotherly old washer-women with good appetites. As for the young cock who was to have been the ancestor of many wonderful chickens for market and prize-pen, for reasons of either ill-health or chivalry, he was celibate from birth, and could never be beguiled into taking any interest in his wives. He spent most of his life in having fainting fits, or fleeing on staggering legs from younger and lustier birds. At other times he dreamed on one leg, his melancholy head plunged into his bosom. ---- Haidee got on well at school. Far from being troubled by lack of intelligence she was an exceedingly clever girl; but she hated study, and much preferred cleaning out rabbit-hutches or putting fresh straw in the hens' nests. Her passion was for a pony. There was a little governess-car in the Stable-house, and permission with the tenants to use it. Only there was nothing to pull it. But three months after their arrival Haidee looked up from a letter from Westenra, and announced the receipt of twenty pounds for the purchase of a pony. Val stared. "You did n't ask for it, did you, Haidee?" "Oh, no; I just mentioned that there was a cart, and how nice it would be if there was a horse, and how I would do all the looking after it myself, and we need n't have to pay a man at all," said Haidee airy and unblushing. Val did not reproach her, but she felt vexed that Westenra should be asked to hand out money when she, though hard-pressed, abstained to ask for anything but the price of everyday necessities. However, the pony was a great joy to Haidee, and she had an excuse at last for the stable-boy airs she loved to assume. Nothing pleased her better than to take off her skirts, and donning knickers and long boots, clean out the stable. She would swagger and swing her shovel and shout "Gittap!" and "Hey thar!" as though she had been brought up in a farmyard. Val's unconventional soul was hard to shock, but even she sometimes wondered what Westenra, who admired Vere-de-Vere repose in a woman, would say if he could hear his adopted child at her labour of love in Joy's stable. A compensating feature was that the girl was in superb health, and fortunately, there were no prim people at hand to be shocked. Indeed, as far as society was concerned Cliff Farm might have been situated at the Antipodes. No one came to call, and not a soul in the island suspected that the well-known writer, "Wanderfoot," was living peacefully among them, feeding bran mashes to a pony and setting broody hens. The only people who interested themselves in the occupants of Cliff Farm were the louts from the neighbouring farm, and their interest could very well have been dispensed with. When they looked over the hedge, and found Haidee in long boots and knickers, whistling as she cleaned out the stable, they stood sniggering; and when Val took pot shots with her rook rifle at the crows that picked the buds from the fruit-trees, they made it their business to find out if she had a gun licence. The genus lout is of much the same kidney all the world over. In Jersey the farmers have a great objection to "gentlemen farmers," and as Val seemed to come under that heading, they disliked her accordingly. Little she recked as long as they did not openly interfere. But she and Haidee were sometimes nervous in their lonely house, and Val would often get up in the night and fire a shot out the window, just to let stray loafers know that they were not afraid. Eventually they got a couple of dogs, and were more at ease. Their nearest neighbour, Scone, was a gross-looking man, with coarse ears and little pig-eyes; yet apparently he had the best kind of heart inside his ungainly body, for he was all good advice and helpful words to the occupants of Cliff Farm. He advised Val to keep a pig to eat her "waste," and incidentally volunteered to supply her with one from a litter of his own. Later he offered to take her chickens and eggs to market on condition that she bought her butter and milk from him. It was not until long afterwards that she discovered what mean advantage had been taken of her trusting belief in the inherent decency of man. These farming people disliked her. She was not one of them, and that was enough to call forth all their malice and ill-will. Scone had charged double what a pig would have cost at the market, and jested with his cronies on the subject. Also through his kind ministrations she was paying a penny more per quart for milk than any one in the island and receiving twopence less per dozen for her eggs. However, this knowledge came later. For the time Farmer Scone was all unction and good advice, and Mrs. Scone came often to the house to give Val the benefit of her knowledge of chickens. She was a common little woman, with a mouth full of decayed teeth, and a purple nose, but Val looked upon her as a type, and she never disdained to know types. Besides, Mrs. Scone was an oracle on chickens, or so she professed. Certainly most of her statements as to food, etc., were at variance with the poultry journals, but she sounded very practical and convincing, and Val had never had experience of people who from sheer malice give wrong advice, and was far from suspecting the depths of meanness that can lie in an ignorant mind. It was Mrs. Scone who advised her to rear capons for the market. Said she: