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Page 3
Phoebe confided to me that she was on the eve of loving the postman when
the carrier came across her horizon.
"It doesn't do to be too hysty, does it, miss?" she asked me as we were
weeding the onion bed. "I was to give the postman his answer on the
Monday night, and it was on the Monday morning that Mr. Gladwish made his
first trip here as carrier. I may say I never wyvered from that moment,
and no more did he. When I think how near I came to promising the
postman it gives me a turn." (I can understand that, for I once met the
man I nearly promised years before to marry, and we both experienced such
a sense of relief at being free instead of bound that we came near
falling in love for sheer joy.)
The last and most important member of the household is the Square Baby.
His name is Albert Edward, and he is really five years old and no baby at
all; but his appearance on this planet was in the nature of a complete
surprise to all parties concerned, and he is spoiled accordingly. He has
a square head and jaw, square shoulders, square hands and feet. He is
red and white and solid and stolid and slow-witted, as the young of his
class commonly are, and will make a bulwark of the nation in course of
time, I should think; for England has to produce a few thousand such
square babies every year for use in the colonies and in the standing
army. Albert Edward has already a military gait, and when he has
acquired a habit of obedience at all comparable with his power of
command, he will be able to take up the white man's burden with
distinguished success. Meantime I can never look at him without
marvelling how the English climate can transmute bacon and eggs, tea and
the solid household loaf into such radiant roses and lilies as bloom upon
his cheeks and lips.
CHAPTER III
July 8th.
Thornycroft is by way of being a small poultry farm.
In reaching it from Barbury Green, you take the first left-hand road, go
till you drop, and there you are.
It reminds me of my "grandmother's farm at Older." Did you know the song
when you were a child?--
My grandmother had a very fine farm
'Way down in the fields of Older.
With a cluck-cluck here,
And a cluck-cluck there,
Here and there a cluck-cluck,
Cluck-cluck here and there,
Down in the fields at Older.
It goes on for ever by the simple subterfuge of changing a few words in
each verse.
My grandmother had a very fine farm
'Way down in the fields of Older.
With a quack-quack here,
And a quack-quack there,
Here and there a quack-quack,
Quack-quack here and there,
Down in the fields at Older.
This is followed by the gobble-gobble, moo-moo, baa-baa, etc., as long as
the laureate's imagination and the infant's breath hold good. The tune
is pretty, and I do not know, or did not, when I was young, a more
fascinating lyric.
Thornycroft House must have belonged to a country gentleman once upon a
time, or to more than one; men who built on a bit here and there once in
a hundred years, until finally we have this charmingly irregular and
dilapidated whole. You go up three steps into Mrs. Heaven's room, down
two into mine, while Phoebe's is up in a sort of turret with long, narrow
lattices opening into the creepers. There are crooked little
stair-cases, passages that branch off into other passages and lead
nowhere in particular; I can't think of a better house in which to play
hide and seek on a wet day. In front, what was once, doubtless, a green,
is cut up into greens; to wit, a vegetable garden, where the onions,
turnips, and potatoes grow cosily up to the very door-sill; the
utilitarian aspect of it all being varied by some scarlet-runners and a
scattering of poppies on either side of the path.
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