“Arrah that was no good at all at all,” he said in a disgusted tone. “They wouldn’t be after going widin a mile of it.”
“But, Patrick,” I replied reprovingly, for I was afraid he had not given the experiment a fair trial, “they must have been within a mile of it, as the orchard is not a quarter of a mile either way, and they seem to be as plenty there as ever.”
“And your honor may well say that. Plenty, is it? There is no end of them, and they keep growing on us every day.”
That was a personal way of stating the case which made my flesh creep, and sent itching sensations over my whole body. So I asked him hastily,
“Then why did you not try the lamp?”
“Try? And sure and I did that same. Och, but it burned beautifully, and all the country round could have seen their way to steal our fruit, only there wasn’t any fruit to steal. More’s the pity.”
“Well, what did you catch?” I asked impatiently.
“Catch, is it? Sure the first night I caught a mosquito and a house-fly, and the next night I caught only a mosquito. I didn’t think it worth while to be wasting oil at that rate, for we would be a hundred years before we caught all the bugs in our orchard; and then, more be token, they would grow ten times as fast.”
Since the commencement of my horticultural operations I had had on my mind and in my heart a longing for a bed of mushrooms. The realization of this dream had been postponed in consequence of a certain obscurity in the directions contained in my authorities. Bridgeman was very enthusiastic and hopeful, but slightly incomprehensible. He said that the bed must be established in “a light cellar.” Now none of my houses had a light cellar—neither the first one imported from Nantucket, which might be expected to produce any imaginable eccentricity, nor that old-fashioned farm-house at Rockville Centre, nor the modern production of lath and plaster. It is true that when the first was in the formative state—had got as far as the cellar and no farther—in which condition it remained, as has been explained, that part of the construction was as light as could be wished; still I felt in my soul that the necessary cellar must be the cellar of a house, not a house that was all cellar. If Bridgeman had only said a light garret, I could have accommodated him. But all cellars I had ever entered were dark. Or if there had been some way of putting a cellar out of doors. I could have introduced the gas into the cellar, but was afraid to burn it or kerosene lest they might burn too much. I was all in the dark about the cellar, and doubted whether artificial aid if attainable would convert its inherent darkness into the light of Bridgeman’s intelligence.
He said if there was no light cellar we might use an old shed. But here, again, was a similar difficulty. We had no old shed; they were all new: besides, they were not much lighter than the cellar. Light was evidently necessary, and it was only after much thought that I hit upon a feasible plan. We had built a sort of greenhouse; it had not been used long, the plants not proving green enough to live in it, and it had been converted into a chicken-coop for the forcing of infant chickens. No better place could be selected, if light was wanted; for the sun poured down upon its glass roof and sides all day long, till the chickens got so over-heated under the forcing process that they spent most of their time, when they were not engaged pulling out each other’s feathers, standing and panting with their mouths open. Here it was that I determined to establish the mushroom-bed, where it would have a sure chance to heat, and where it could have as much light as the lightest cellar Bridgeman had ever discovered.