BETTER LO’ED YE CANNA BE.
Dan, Watty, and Bell went to the “cavie” or hencoop, folded back the old bag which had been dropt over the front of it to keep the inmates warm, and Dan saw to his intense delight two little heads peeping from under their feathery covering. His educated although single eye at once settled the kind: “Game, game, every inch o’ them, and baith cocks!” Then turning to his crony he said: “Watty, you’ll lift the hen canny, canny, an’ I’ll tak’ stock.”
The result was “six cocks an’ five hens, the real true-blue breed,” declared by Dan, and confirmed by Watty, with the addition of, “Dan, ye’re rich noo.”
Bell would not hear of them being shifted that night, and ultimately persuaded Dan to “leave them wi’ her hen till they were pickin’ for themselves; she would take care o’ them, an’ nae cats could get near them, for she had just gotten new nets.”
Dan got Bell to take the ducks,—“he couldn’t bear them; there was nae water for them; his fowls wad dab them till there was no’ ane left; it wad be a great obleegement to him.”
When Dan got home he could not rest; he smartly took down his fishing-rod and strode to the waterside. The evening air cooled him, and he was further consoled by a good take. Under the “bass” (straw door-mat) at Knowe Park kitchen door next morning, Bell found a ten-pound salmon and three good large trouts—possibly they had not passed the water-bailiffs. Bell looked at all sides of the question of “what to do with them?” Many difficulties presented themselves to her honest, correct mind, and as the greatest of these was, “What else could she do with them?” she took in the foundlings and used them well.
There was a little coming and going between Bell and Dan, until the chickens were able to shift for themselves. When that was the case, he carried them carefully over to his own house, and shared it with them for a few months. The ducklings throve with Bell, and she repaid Dan for them and the fish (for she found out that her guess as to its having come from Dan was correct) in several ways, but principally by occasional dozens of her “buttered” eggs. When eggs were abundant, and therefore cheap, she preserved a large quantity by rubbing them when newly laid with a very little butter all over, and keeping them in salt. It was generally thought that she had some special receipt or “secret,” for her buttered eggs had a fresh, curdy, rich flavour that few preservers could attain to.
A penurious old maid had complained to Bell that “she did not understand her hens; she was quite provoked at them, because in the summer-time, when eggs were only sixpence the dozen, they laid lots, but in the winter-time, when they were more than double that price, they would not lay at all.”
CATCHING A TARTAR.
Bell’s reply was: “I daresay no’; but ’deed, mem, ye’ll need to baith feed them better, an’ keep them cleaner and cosier, or they’ll do but little for you.”