“Ah, my dear friend,” says she, shaking his hand, “we see that buds will match with buds. I could never find it in my heart to wed a bud to a full-blown rose.”
I don't doubt that the full-blown rose, as he went down the fort hill, cursed Mrs. Gunning's cow's tail and all her cows' pedigrees. But she looked as serene as if he had pledged the young couple's health (instead of going off and leaving his wine half tasted), and took me to see her chickens' cupboard.
There were shelves with rows of cans and bottles, each can or bottle labelled “Molly,” or “Lucy,” or “Speckie,” and so on.
“I have discovered,” Mrs. Gunning says to me, “that one hen's food may be another hen's poison, so I mix and prepare for each fowl what that fowl seems to need. For instance, Lucy can bear more meal than Speckie, and the Shanghai cock had to be strongly encouraged. Though it sometimes happens,” says she, casting her eye back towards the drawing-room,“that such a fellow gets pampered, and has to have his diet reduced and his spirit cooled down again.”
THE CURSED PATOIS
AS his boat shot to the camp dock of beach stones, the camper thought he heard a child's voice behind the screen of brush. He leaped out and drew the boat to its landing upon a cross-piece held by two uprights in the water, and ascended the steep path worn in leaf mould.
There was not only a child, there was a woman also in the camp. And Frank Puttany, his German feet planted outward in a line, his smiling dark face unctuous with hospitality towards creatures whom he had evidently introduced, in foolish helplessness gave his partner the usual greeting: