What was it, I wonder, that killed Maximilianus? Maximilianus was a very small shrew, and we found him running about the garden; he was just about as long as his name. He was not the least frightened, and we carried him about for half a day; but we found nothing he could eat, until at last we came upon a very large, fat, orange-coloured centipede. Maximilianus seized upon this with the utmost delight, began it vigorously at one end, and ate it up like a radish as far as the middle. Then he died.
We had once a visitor in the shape of a squirrel, who came uninvited, made his abode with us for some months, and finally departed, taking “French leave.” My mother was his guide, philosopher, and friend. He slept in a pocket of her apron (this was in the seventies), whence he came out to fly up the curtains and drop down, venture on to the breakfast table, and experiment on her tea with a tiny paw. He always ran up the curtain when he was scolded; as for instance when my father, going to the sideboard to cut ham, found the squirrel’s head just coming out of it, having eaten its way through from the other side. Then, after being received in the bosom of our family, after sharing meals with the household, after attending lessons and even prayers (when he ran up the back of a kneeling housemaid), the skwug suddenly disappeared without warning. A few days after, my mother was walking in the wood, when a squirrel ran up to her, put its paw upon her foot, looked her in the face, then turned and ran away. It was never heard of again.
Sometimes you find animals which, though not very near and dear to human beings, have a great influence on other animals. Our donkey died the other day. She was a remarkable and original animal. Though she was a fixture, taken at a high valuation from our predecessors, her demeanour was such that we called her Jack, and thought she had retired to a well-earned repose. Then we found she was not quite two years old, and a lady. We were always good friends, but not specially intimate. She and her mule-foal might come to the window for bread and salt when the horses were not allowed on the grass; but for weeks together she did not avail herself of this privilege, till one day a snort was heard from outside, and the donkey’s nose was seen flattened against the glass. Once, when my mother was walking with a friend of hers,—not an acquaintance of the donkey,—Jack, for I cannot help calling her so, solemnly accompanied them all the afternoon, walking between them. But such occasional walks, and the fact that she was amiably willing to follow anyone quite impartially for a handful of oats, constituted the extent of our intimacy with her. Not such was her relation to the other animals. As exclusively as my goat walked with the cows, Jack walked with the horses. She did not, of course, consider herself so superior to her company as the goat. She made many friends among the horses; you might not have known it, perhaps, but neither as a general rule would you suspect the friendship which men have for one another by their way of behaving. If a man meets a great friend in company, he either takes no notice of him or stands near him without saying anything. Jack used to stand about with the horses without saying anything, but they liked to have her near.
One morning Jack was found dead of fatty degeneration of the heart. “I’m sure the horses miss her,” said the bailiff’s wife; “I look at them standing in the yard, and I can see they miss her.”
Jack was buried in the orchard, and her little mule followed the body as far as the garden-gate. But there they shut the door, and the one mourner was left outside.
V
THE DESERTED LOVER
EVER since I was a very small child I had longed to possess a pair of budgerrygars. There was a tradition of three live ones once in our family, in proof whereof my nurse could point to a little stuffed bird in its case. I used to gaze with longing at that beautiful green and yellow creature, with the speckled back and the black and blue feathers in its neck, sitting with a foreground of quaking grasses and an eternal blue sky behind. There existed also, but rarely seen, a little cardboard box containing a few of these same mysteriously beautiful blue and yellow and green feathers, with here and there a long strong tail or wing quill. Yes, there had been budgerrygars among us once; there were even real live ones now in the possession of those happy Italian women who sit at the street corners, but for me—while I was still a child—they were inmates of that imaginary Paradise of unattainable things, wherein might be found little wax cages of birds, and the fluffy hollow ducks which live in confectioners’ shops and are sold for ninepence.
After I was grown up, a friend gave me one of these ducks; I have it still, and the halo still surrounds it. When I was grown up, too, some one gave me a pair of budgerrygars; and there followed a tragedy which was not bargained for in the price paid.