From his window the Poet could see Mrs. Cowslip and the bull-calf side by side, with their necks stretched out over the barnyard gate, sending forth their lamentations toward the bottom of the pasture, where the brook ran under the stone-wall into a thicket of old willow trees heavily encumbered with wild grapevines. He could hear Cleopatra and Clarence clattering about uneasily on the floor of their stalls, while Reginald squealed for his breakfast with more than his usual insistence, and their neighbors in the hennery cackled inquiringly.
Gabriel was kicking on his boots outside the kitchen door when the Poet and Galatea hurried down, eager to know how they could calm the feelings of their four-legged partners.
“Oh, pshaw!” said Gabriel, seizing a tin milk-pail, “critters are like folks; they have their ornery spells without knowin’ what’s the matter with ’em.”
“I never saw Mrs. Cowslip paw the dust up over her head before,” said Galatea. “See! Now Gustavius is doing it.”
“She’s giving her offspring lessons in some mysterious rites of her species,” said the Poet oracularly. “I shall investigate and make a note of it.”
“No, it’s instinct,” said Gabriel, as the Poet and his sister accompanied him to the barnyard. “You can edicate critters till you’re blue in the face. You can teach ’em to act like human folks almost, and then some day, all of a sudden, they’ll forgit everything and do the same fool things their great-grandmothers did.”
Gabriel entered the barnyard with a three-legged stool, butted his head into the flank of Mrs. Cowslip, and proceeded to play a pleasant tune on the bottom of the tin pail. Gustavius was not distracted by this familiar operation. Suddenly he redoubled his bellowings over the barnyard gate. Mrs. Cowslip wavered between surges of emotion and her respect for Gabriel.
“So, boss,” commanded the man with the half-filled pail between his knees. And then, as Mrs. Cowslip switched her tail in his face: “Stand still, darn ye!”
Such language at such a time was not wise. Mrs. Cowslip, ignoring intervening obstacles, rushed to join Gustavius in a duet of lamentation, leaving Gabriel on his back with the milk-pail overturned into his protesting bosom. He rose, gasping, with arms hanging limp like a man trying to get as far away from his clothes as possible. At that moment Amanda emerged wildly from the hennery, screaming:—
“Gabe! Gabe! They’s only four eggs under the speckled hen!”