CHAPTER IX.
THE sound of the mowing-machine awakened us early on the morning that we were to leave Renvyle House Hotel. To and fro the rattle came, with a measured crescendo and diminuendo that slowly aroused our sleepy minds to the consciousness that the tennis ground was being mown, and that it was Monday, and that—this finally, after sluggish eyes had become aware of pink roses swaying in sunshine in and out of the open window—another fine day had been bestowed upon us whereon to make our journey. The clatter of the mowing-machine grew louder, and the smell of the cut grass came in at the window, blending sweetly with the strong language of the gardener to his underling, as the machine was steered in its difficult course among the flower beds.
THE RENVYLE DONKEY.
When we leaned out across the broad window sill, the business was almost finished, and the panniers of a donkey, who was standing on the gravel walk with his head drooped between his forelegs, in a half-doze were spilling over with the short green grass, and the chopped-off heads of the daisies. We stared at the donkey in a kind of bewilderment. The top of his head was tufted like a Houdan hen’s, but stare as we might we could not see his ears, and it was so astonishing a phenomenon that we went downstairs to investigate it.
It was a genuine summer morning at last; the sun shone hotly down on our bare heads as we passed the smooth lawn-tennis ground, with the long alternate grey and green lines ruled on it by the machine, and we stood for a moment or two in the shade of the thick fuchsia arch that led to the old-fashioned garden plot, and listened to the bees fussing in and out of the masses of blood-red blossom over our heads. The donkey was still dozing under his panniers as we came up to him, and we saw beyond any manner of doubting that the only ears he possessed were little circles no higher than napkin-rings, out of which sprouted thick tufts of wool and coarse brown hair. Just then the men neared us with the machine, and we asked them for an explanation.
“His ears was cut off in the time of th’ agitation,” the gardener replied, in a voice that showed that the fact had long ago ceased to have any interest for him, as he emptied the last boxful of grass into the panniers. “He was a rale good little ass thim times, faith he was.”
Probably our faces conveyed our feelings, for the gardener went on: “Indeed, it was a quare thing to do to him; but, whatever, they got him one morning in the field with the two ears cut off him as even with his head as if ye thrimmed them with that mow-sheen.”
We passed our hands over the mutilated stumps with a horror that evidently gratified the gardener. “There was one of the ears left hanging down when we got him,” he proceeded. “I suppose they thought it was the most way they could vex us. They grewn what ye see since then, and no more, and the flies has him mad sometimes.”