As for eggs and chickens, and fat hens that would no longer lay, they were all sick of them as articles of diet. Haidee, who in New York days was used to attack with relish three city eggs of assorted flavours mixed in a tumbler, now turned away in weariness and disgust from the brown-shelled ones fresh from the nest.
And the rabbits were a thorn in the flesh, and a weariness to the sole of the foot! Eternally they were killed by stoats, eaten by rats, stolen, or else dug their way out from under the runs and fled for the open. If these modes of escape all failed, Bran, in his small way, would do what he could for them. When he came toddling indoors to declare with an effulgent smile his love for Haidee she would start up snapping:
"Yes, I know what that means. You've let the rabbits out. You always have when you love me. Have you, Bran?"
"Well, by aksdent, Haidee...."
"Oh, I know your aksdents...."
With blank faces she and Val would rush from the house and scoot after the scurrying rabbits. The latter usually got the best of the game and achieved liberty.
The truth had to be faced that there was no money to be made out of the farm. High hopes of a fortune had long since fallen to the dust. Chickens and rabbits are very charming to watch at their antics in the sunshine, but depending upon them for a living, unless you are an expert poultry farmer, is waste of time. Val realised it at last, and that other ways and means for obtaining money must be reflected upon. She had no intention of accepting another rap of Westenra's for either her own or Bran's support. So one day she sat down and wrote to Branker Preston, asking him if he could find an opening for some "Wanderfoot" articles.
"I cannot travel," she wrote, "but I have a good store of unused material in the cupboards of my mind, and I need money." Preston answered that he would not be long in finding a demand for anything she could supply. When, however, the demand came she found herself curiously unable to cope with it. The task of sitting down to write newspaper articles after a lapse of more than two years into domesticity was not an easy one. As love and maternity had absorbed her mother's art, so in a smaller degree the same things had encroached upon Val's gift. Added to which was a period of unbroken intercourse with chickens and rabbits, enlivened only by digging in the garden or running the pony up and down when he got colic. Such occupations are excellent for the health, and may even induce a good working philosophy, but they do not make the intellect to scintillate like the stars, nor bestow distinction upon that elusive quality in writing which is known as style. She found that when she tried to think connectedly on abstract subjects things slithered out of her mind and left a headache behind. After a few days, in which her brain seemed to act in delirium, and the written results read to her like the ravings of a suddenly liberated lunatic, she threw down her pen in despair.
"It is this brute of an island! I can never write here," she cried desperately. She had suffered too much there, and her instinct was always to flee from places where sorrow had smitten her, to save her soul alive before it was injured beyond aid. Such places seemed to have a power for evil over her. Moreover her feet had long ached to be gone from the small, cramped island. It had served its purpose. The children were healthy and strong, her own body recuperated. Now that she must take up her pen once more, plainly it was time to pull stakes. There was no inspiration for her in Jersey.
For another thing, she began to be afraid that if she remained much longer she might become a serious criminal; that is to say, one upon whom the law would lay hands. It was Farmer Scone who helped her to this conclusion and her final decision to go.