Besides her great fondness for animals Margaret had an extraordinary understanding of them. She had a way of talking with bird and beast that lent reality to the legends of St. Francis. The "Sermon to the Birds" is no more intimate, nor that to the fishes more appropriate, than the daily admonitions she gave the pig, the counsel she tendered the chickens, to which they listened with grave attention, the pig as if hypnotized, his two fore feet planted stolidly, his eyes fixed upon her; the chickens with their heads turned consideringly, now on this side now on the other, and with little guttural comments of question or approval. The wolf reputed to have put his paw in the saint's hand seemed infinitely less legendary to me after I had seen the pig, released from his pen, follow her to the kitchen stoop, and, with manners as gentlemanly as he could counterfeit, eat out of a pan she held for him. When he had finished, she offered him her hand, as if to pledge him to further good manners; and he made a clumsy pawing motion and managed with her help to get a hoof into her palm. She gave it a grave shake and released it.
"You're improvin'," was all she said; while the pig, delighted, no doubt, with his new accomplishment, took to his four feet, with squeals of delight, around the corner of the house.
One day there came from about her person a strange chirping, a trifle muffled, like the chirping of a tiny chicken. She absolutely ignored it. She held her head stiff and high, as she was wont to do when she served us or when she referred to "me brother Pat." But when she saw that the day could not after all be carried by a mere haughty ignoring of facts, she spoke.
"Poor little uneducated abandoned fowl, ma'am, to cry out against its own interests! I'm sorry, but I couldn't leave it in the cold. So, for the love of its mother and God's mother, I'm carryin' it in me bosom to keep it warm. And I'd think you'd be offended if I didn't believe you're a follower of Him that carried the lambs there too!"
It was in such ways that she left you no argument, disarmed all objection, and pursued her own way and predilections, as the saints, the poor, and other chosen of the Lord have, I believe, always done.
Loyalty was, perhaps, the largest part of her code; but it was based rather on the assumption that you were hers than that she was yours. Guests came seldom to that old house; but the welcome she gave them when they did come was a thing to warm the heart.
She assumed a devoted possession of me and my affairs. When these fared ill, she was as Babylon desolated; when they went comparatively well, she was overjoyed, her step lightened, her head went up; she was as a city set upon a hill, that cannot be hid. But it was toward those whom she took to be my enemies that she really shone. By shrewd guesses and by dint of a few downright questions, she figured out that a deal of sorrow and calamity had come to me through the selfishness of others. That was enough for her! Might the Lord smite them! Might a murrain seize them and their cattle!
"But they have no cattle, Margaret! They live in a very large city."
(It was always a temptation to see how she would right herself.)
"Then may devastation befittin' them fall on their basements and their battlements! May their balustrades burst and a sign of pestilence be put upon their door-sills! And—now God forgive me—whenever He's willin' to take them—for it's He would know what to do with them,"—this with a fierce knowing nod,—"He has my willin'ness they should go! I'd think it a fairer earth without them, and I'd greet the sun the friendlier in the morn'n' for knowin' he'd not set his bright eye on them."