"Oh, why?"
"Them fowls wot just crowed is cocks—but the uvver's an 'en."
This piece of highly-informative news gradually seeped into the man's rather one-sided intelligence. He had been a draper's assistant back home in England—in Manchester, to be exact, where he had excelled in the manly art of selling calico, and corsets, and cotton stockings.
In those days—at any rate, it was so among the Barr Colonists—the very first thing a man did to his stock (even before feeding them) was to endow them with names. People with classical educations christened their animals Plato, Virgil, Psyche, and such like appellations. Those with biblical proclivities and training resorted to Pharaoh, Esau, Mordecai, and similar titles; whereas the common people fell back on Bill, and Sally, and Prince, and other every-day names.
Quite early in the game, Sam had remarked this trait. Was not their own team bearing up bravely under the burden of "Tempest" and "Kruger"? And weren't Trailey's nags nicknamed "Arthur" and "Freddie"? All round him—on the trail, in camp, at Saskatoon, had he not listened to vapid oxen being frantically inveigled with "Sissy," and "Carl," and "Seneca," and terribly frequently, also, with long-drawn-out strings of curses, which were fast dooming otherwise good-living young Englishmen to everlasting perdition? One colonist, an ex-schoolmaster and classical scholar, actually named his oxen "Aristophanes" and "Euripides." His explanation was that the former ox, possessing very long horns, was always hooking his mate, which, because of having no horns at all, was very docile.
"Wot's their nymes?" Sam asked of the man, nodding at the fowls.
The proud owner instantly waxed enthusiastic. "That one with only one toe on its right foot—you can't see it from here; well, that's called Phyllis, after my wife's sister. The other one, the one that doesn't crow, I've named Susie—to remind me of my first wife, the mother of my little girl there. That other beggar, the one with its eye pecked out, we call Amos, on account of my once having an uncle named Amos, who came home from the Indian Mutiny with only one eye. He was a canteen sergeant."
"Yes, it's very 'andy to 'ave only one eye in the harmy," observed Sam with the innocent manner of a conjurer about to produce three or four hundred yards of linoleum out of a silk hat.
"Oh, why?" demanded the ex-draper, biting hugely.
"Why, because," replied Sam, winking wickedly at Bert, "when a sodger wiv only one eye charges the henemy, it cuts the barsteds in 'alf."