When he again opened his eyes there was a dim gray light in the fowl-house, and sharp in his ear was ringing the good-morrow of the Brahma chanticleer.
It was daybreak.
A round red face looked in at the square hole, and the voice of the keeper’s wife said, “Little gemman, Big George will be arter ye come eight o’clock, and ’t ’ll go hard wi’ yer. Say now, yer didn’t snare the bird?”
“No,” said Bertie, languidly, lying full length on the straw; he felt shivery and chilly, and very stiff and very miserable in all ways.
“But yer know who did!” persisted the woman. “Now, jist you tell me, and I’ll make it all square with George, and he’ll let you out, and we’ll gie ye porridge, and we’ll take ye home on the donkey.”
The little Earl was silent.
“Now, drat ye for a obstinate! I can’t abide a obstinate,” said the woman, angrily. “Who did snare the bird? jist say that; ’tis all, and mighty little.”
“I will not say that,” said Bertie; and the woman slammed a wooden door that there was to the loop-hole, and told him he was a mule and a pig, and that she was not going to waste any more words about him; she should let the birds out by the bars. What she called the bars, which were two movable lengths of wood at the bottom of one of the walls, did in point of fact soon slip aside, and the fowls all cackled and strutted and fluttered after their different manners, and bustled through the opening towards the daylight and the scattered corn, the Brahma cock having much ado to squeeze his plumage where his wives had passed.
“The puppy’s hungry,” said Bertie, timidly.
“Drat the puppy!” said the woman outside; and no more compassion was wrung out of her. The little Earl felt very languid, light-headed, and strange; he was faint, and a little feverish.