IV
Strawberries and trout. How is that for a combination?
I remember that as a golden summer, an enthusiastic summer, and, on the whole, a successful one
I remember that as a golden summer, an enthusiastic summer, and, on the whole, a successful one. Our early garden grew—also the second planting and the third. William Deegan made it his business to see that they did. I realized presently that my special forte lay in directing a sizable garden like that rather than in performing the actual labor, especially when June arrived and the sun began to approach the perpendicular and take on callithump. You probably don't know what callithump is, but you will find out if you undertake to hoe sod-ground potatoes in July. It has something to do with brazen trumpets and violence.
I became acquainted with callithump when I straightened out the asparagus-bed. The weeds had got a master start there, and the feeble feathery asparagus shoots were quite overtopped and lost. I said the job required a microscopic eye and a delicate hand. I would set the asparagus-bed in order myself.
It is surprising how much ground a hundred asparagus roots can cover. Elizabeth had superintended their planting, during a period when I had been absent, and, remembering my mania for having things far apart, she had let herself go in the matter of space. She had made it rich, too, and the weeds just loved it. Some of them were up to my waist. I said they would have to be pulled by hand and I would get up in the cool of the morning and do it.
It is almost impossible to beat the sun up in June. I was out there at five o'clock, but the sun was already busy and had got the range. By the time I had pulled half-way down one row I could feel the callithump working. Also something else. We claimed to have no mosquitoes in Brook Ridge, so it could not have been those. Whatever it was kept me swearing steadily, and pawing and slapping and sweating blood. When I had finished a row I crept in, got some fresh clothes and a towel, and made a dash for the brook. I had cleaned out a special pool behind the ice-house, and built a little dressing-platform. In less than a minute I was in the water, looking up at the sky and hearing the birds sing. Talk about luxury! After breakfast I took Elizabeth out to show her my progress.
"It looks nice," she said, "and how easily you did it!"
It took me four memorable mornings to finish the asparagus-bed, and, proud as I was of the job, I resigned, after that, in favor of William. The brazen trumpets of the sky even at high noon could not phase W. Deegan. Often in July I have sat in the maple shade, with pride watching him carry out my directions concerning weeds and potato-bugs. I admired and honored William. I have the greatest respect for honorable toil, but even more for callithump.
Sometimes in the early morning I went trout-fishing. There is more fascination and less waste tissue in that. I would creep down while the house was still and get my rod and basket, and take a sheltered lane that was like a green tunnel through the woods, where the birds were just tuning up for a concert, then out across the "bean-lot," to strike the brook at about the head of navigation—for trout.
They were plenty enough and just of the right size—that is to say, eight to eleven inches long—and easy enough to get if one was very careful. You could not cast for them; the brook was too small and brushy for that. You had to use a very short line, and wind it around the end of the rod, and work it through the branches, and then carefully, very carefully, unwind and let the hook drop lightly on the water. Then as likely as not there would be a swift, tingling tug, and, if you were lucky, an instant later you would have a beautiful red-speckled fellow landed among the grass and field flowers, his gay colors glancing in the sun.
The open places also required maneuvering. One does not walk up to the bank and fish for wild trout—not in a stream that is as clear as glass and where every fish in it can see the slightest movement on the bank. To fish such a place is to lie flat on the stomach and work forward inch by inch through the grass, Indian fashion, until the water is in reach. Even then you must not look, but feel, unwinding the line slowly, slowly, until the fly or worm taps the water. Then if you have done it well and the trout is there, and it is June, there will be results—sharp, quick, sudden results that insure the best breakfast in the world—hot fried trout, fresh from a New England brook.
The Joy went with me on some of these excursions. She liked to have me call her early and go tiptoing and whispering about our preparations and to wade off through the dewy grass in her rubber boots, leaving the rest of the house asleep. She generally carried the basket, and was deeply interested in my maneuvers when the cry of the "teacher"-bird and the call of the wood-thrush did not distract her attention. I can still see the grass up to her fat little waist, her comical blue apron, her dimpled round face and the sunlight on her hair. She had a deep pity for the trout, but her sporting instinct was deeper still. Sometimes when there was a slip, and a big shining fellow would go bouncing and splashing back into the brook, she would jump up and down and demand, excitedly:
"Why didn't you catch that one, Daddy? Why didn't you catch him? That was a big, big, big one?" And she walked very proudly when we had six or more to carry back for breakfast.
Strawberries and trout—how is that for a breakfast combination in June? Trout just from the water and strawberries fresh from the garden. We had planted a good patch of strawberries the August of our arrival and they had done wonderfully well for the first year. Often by the time we had come from fishing Elizabeth had been out and filled a bowl, and sometimes even made a short-cake, for we were old-fashioned enough to love short-cake—old-fashioned short-cake made with biscuit dough (not the sweet-cake kind) for breakfast. And breakfast with trout and short-cake—short-cake with cream, mind you!—in New England in June, when the windows open on the grass and the wood-thrushes are calling, is just about as near paradise as you can get in this old world.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I
Fate produced a man who had chickens to sell
ith June the Pride and the Hope came home from school. The brook, the barn, Old Beek, and Mis' Cow all had their uses then—also a tent in the yard, a swing, hammock and whatnot. When God made the country He made it especially for children. Burning suns, a weedy garden and potato blight may dismay the old, but such things do not fret the young mind. As long as the brook is cool and the fields are sweet and there is fresh milk and succotash on the table, happy childhood is indifferent to care.
We were given to picnics. Often we packed some food things into a basket and went into the woods and spread them in a shady place. Lena, the Finn, sometimes accompanied these excursions and went quite mad with the delight of them, racing about and digging up flowers and shrubs to plant in the door-yard, fairly whooping it up in joyful Finnish and such English words as she had acquired. I believe the aspect of our woods reminded her of Finland.
Lena was a good soul, that is certain, and measurably instructive. We learned from her how priceless is the gift of good nature, which was the chief thing that kept her with us; also, to eat a number of dishes quite new to us, and that an apple-tree—or perhaps it was an apple, baked or in dumpling—was, in her speech, an "ominy poo." She was not strong on desserts, but she could always fall back on the ominy poo—meaning in a general way the big sweet-apple tree that grew by the barn and was loaded to the breaking-point with delicious fruit. Any baked apple is good, but a big, cold, baked sweet-apple—"punkin sweets," Westbury called them—with cold cream, plenty of it, and a sprinkle of sugar, is about the most blithesome thing in the world. Hurrah for the ominy poo! whether it be the tree, or the fruit, baked or in dumplings. When the strawberry passed and was not, the ominy poo reigned gloriously. I don't know what Lena called certain other dishes that from time to time she tried to substitute—some other kind of poo, maybe—I know we gradually persuaded her away from them into a better way of life.
Sometimes we joined our picnics with the Westburys'—loaded our baskets into a little hand-express wagon, or into the surrey behind Lord Beaconsfield—and these were quite elaborate affairs that required a good deal of preparation and meant a general holiday. More than once we spread long tables on the green of Westbury's shaded lawn that sloped down to the river and the mill, and was a picture-place, if ever there was one. Other days we went over the hills for huckleberries—and came home with pails of the best fruit that grows for pies, bar none. Happy days—days of peace—a true golden age, as it seems now. Will the world, I wonder, ever be so happy and golden again?
We had no intention of embarking in chickens when we settled in Brook Ridge. Neither of us had any love for chickens on foot, and we had no illusions about the fortunes that, according to certain books, could be made from a setting of eggs and a tin hen—an incubator, I mean. Also, our experiment with pigs had cooled us in the matter of live stock for profit.
Still, we did love chickens in their proper place—that is to say, with dumplings or dressing and some of the nice jellies and things which Elizabeth had made during those autumn months of our arrival. It seemed extravagant to have them often; chickens had become chickens since our long-ago early acquaintance with them, when "two bits" had been a fancy price for broilers and old hens. Elizabeth finally conceded that perhaps a few chickens—a very few, kept in a neat inclosure away from the garden—might be desirable. It would be so handy to have one when we wanted it. She even hinted that the sound of a satisfied and reflective hen singing about the barn would add a rural note to our pastoral harmony. Then, of course, there would be the eggs.
Fate produced a man, just at that moment, who had chickens to sell. He had been called away, and would let his flock go cheap—he had about a dozen, he thought, assorted as to age and condition. We could have them for fifty cents each. It seemed an opportunity. William Deegan was instructed to prepare the neat inclosure, which he did with enthusiasm, William being enamoured of anything that was alive.
The man who had been called away had made a poor count of his flock. He arrived with nearly twice as many as he said, but we were in the mood by that time, and took over the bunch. They were not a very inspiring lot. They were of no special breed, but just chickens—a long-legged, roostery set, with a mixture of frazzled hens of years and experience. We said, however, that food and care would improve them. Remember what it had done for Mis' Cow.
"Ye'll be after eatin' thim roosters, prisently," William commented, as we looked at them through the inclosing wire, "before they be gettin' much older. Ye'll be wantin' eggs from the hins."
William's remark seemed wise. We were wanting the eggs, all right, and those ten or twelve speedy-looking roosters ought to go to the platter without much delay. We would feed liberally and begin on the best ones, forthwith.
Still, we did not have chicken that day, nor the next. There is nothing so perverse as the human appetite. Those were not really bad chickens, and in a few days they were much better. If any one of those middle-aged roosters had been brought to us by the butcher we would have paid the usual dollar for it, and, baked and browned and served with fixings, it would have gone well enough, even though a trifle muscular and somewhat resilient.
But somehow this was a different proposition. I don't believe I can explain just why. There was something about the aggregation as a whole that was discouraging. I suspect William's remark that they must be eaten "prisently" had something to do with it. Eating those chickens was not to be an entertainment, a pastime, but a job—a job that increased, for the "old hins" did not lay, or very sparingly—an egg a day being about the average. William brought it in solemnly. We had got to devour that entire flock of chickens, and the thought became daily less attractive. Even our tribe of precious ones, who had always been chicken-hungry before, suddenly became indifferent to the idea of chicken fried, baked, or in fricassee. I said, at last, we would have to have a series of picnics. Anything would taste good at a picnic.
I don't remember how many we used up in that way, but I know the business of getting rid of those chickens seemed interminable. We tried working them off on William and Lena, but even they balked before the end was reached. I have heard it stated that no one can eat thirty quails in thirty days. I don't know about that, but I know that when we tried to put over a dozen chickens on Lena and William in six weeks it was a failure. At last we were reduced to one old hen, who by general consent was made immune. Also free. The garden was too far advanced for her to damage it. The door of the neat wire inclosure was left open for her to go and come at will. There was danger of foxes at night, but we did not shut it. The foxes, however, did not come. Even foxes have to draw the line somewhere. That venerable old lady wandered about the place, pecking and contentedly singing, and in that part we really became fond of her. I think she died at last of old age.