What else disturbed the placid current of Master Simon's cogitations? Why, this: he was the last of his race, and unmarried.
For himself, he had no inclination to marry. But sometimes, as he shaved his chin of a morning, the reflection in his round mirror would suggest another. Was he not neglecting a public duty?
Now there dwelt down at Ponteglos a Mistress Prudence Waddilove, a widow, who kept the "Pandora's Box" Inn on the quay—a very tidy business. Master Simon had known her long before she married the late Waddilove; had indeed sat on the same form with her in infants' school—she being by two years his junior, but always a trifle quicker of wit. He attended her husband's funeral in a neighbourly way, and, a week later, put on his black suit again and went down—still in a neighbourly way—to offer his condolence. Mistress Prudence received him in the best parlour, which smelt damp and chilly in comparison with the little room behind the bar. Master Simon remarked that she must be finding it lonely. Whereupon she wept.
Master Simon suggested that he, for his part, had tried pigeon-breeding, and found that it alleviated solitude in a wonderful manner. "There's my tumblers. If you like, I'll bring you down a pair. They're pretty to watch. Of course, a husband is different—"
"Of course," Mistress Prudence assented, her grief too recent to allow a smile even at the picture of the late Waddilove (a man of full habit) cleaving the air with frequent somersaults. She added, not quite inconsequently:
"He is an angel."
"Of course," said Master Simon, in his turn.
"But I think," she went on, quite inconsequently, "I would rather have a pair of carriers."
"Now, why in the world?" wondered Master Simon. He kept carrier pigeons, to be sure. He kept pigeons of every sort—tumblers, pouters, carriers, Belgians, dragons… the subdivisions, when you came to them, were endless. But the carriers were by no means his show-birds. He kept them mainly for the convenience of Ann the cook. Ann had a cunning eye for a pigeon, and sometimes ventured a trifle of her savings on a match; and though in his masculine pride he never consulted her, Master Simon always felt more confident on hearing that Ann had put money on his bird. Now, when a match took place at some distant town or flying-ground, Ann would naturally be anxious to learn the result as quickly as possible; and Master Simon, finding that the suspense affected her cookery, had fallen into the habit of taking a hamper of carriers to all distant meetings and speeding them back to "Flowing Source" with tidings of his fortune. Apart from this office—which they performed well enough—he took no special pride in them. The offer of a pair of his pet tumblers, worth their weight in gold, had cost him an effort; and when Mistress Prudence, ordinarily a clear-headed woman, declared that she preferred carriers, she could hardly have astonished him more by asking for a pair of stock-doves.
"Oh, certainly," he answered, and went home and thought it over. Women were a puzzle; but he had a dim notion that if he could lay hand on the reason why Mistress Prudence preferred ordinary carriers to prize tumblers, he would hold the key to some of the secrets of the sex. He thought it over for three days, during which he smoked more tobacco than was good for him. At about four o'clock in the afternoon of the third day, a smile enlarged his face. He set down his pipe, smacked his thigh, stood up, sat down again, and began to laugh. He laughed slowly and deliberately—not loudly—for the greater part of that evening, and woke up twice in the night and shook the bedclothes into long waves with his mirth.