All this time the hens at the foot of the ladder are criticising her methods and exclaiming at the length of time she requires in mounting; while the cocks stroll about the yard keeping one eye on the ladder, picking up a seed here and there, and giving a masculine sneer now and then at the too-familiar scene.  They approach the party at intervals, but only to remark that it always makes a man laugh to see a woman go up a ladder.  The next hen, stirred to the depths by this speech, flies up entirely too fast, loses her head, tumbles off the top round, and has to make the ascent over again.  Thus it goes on and on, this petite comedie humaine, and I could enjoy it with my whole heart if Mr. Heaven did not insist on sharing the spectacle with me.  He is so inexpressibly dull, so destitute of humour, that I did not think it likely he would see in the performance anything more than a flock of hens going up a ladder to roost.  But he did; for there is no man so blind that he cannot see the follies of women; and, when he forgot himself so far as to utter a few genial, silly, well-worn reflections upon femininity at large, I turned upon him and revealed to him some of the characteristics of his own sex, gained from an exhaustive study of the barnyard fowl of the masculine gender.  He went into the house discomfited, though chuckling a little at my vehemence; but at least I have made it for ever impossible for him to watch his hens without an occasional glance at the cocks.

CHAPTER VII

July 12th.

O the pathos of a poultry farm!  Catherine of Aragon, the black Spanish hen that stole her nest, brought out nine chicks this morning, and the business-like and marble-hearted Phoebe has taken them away and given them to another hen who has only seven.  Two mothers cannot be wasted on these small families—­it would not be profitable; and the older mother, having been tried and found faithful over seven, has been given the other nine and accepted them.  What of the bereft one?  She is miserable and stands about moping and forlorn, but it is no use fighting against the inevitable; hens’ hearts must obey the same laws that govern the rotation of crops.  Catherine of Aragon feels her lot a bitter one just now, but in time she will succumb, and lay, which is more to the point.

We have had a very busy evening, beginning with the rats’ supper—­delicate sandwiches of bread-and-butter spread with Paris green.

We have a new brood of seventeen ducklings just hatched this afternoon.  When we came to the nest the yellow and brown bunches of down and fluff were peeping out from under the hen’s wings in the prettiest fashion in the world.

“It’s a noble hen!” I said to Phoebe.

“She ain’t so nowble as she looks,” Phoebe answered grimly.  “It was another ’en that brooded these eggs for near on three weeks and then this big one come along with a fancy she’d like a family ’erself if she could steal one without too much trouble; so she drove the rightful ’en off the nest, finished up the last few days, and ’ere she is in possession of the ducklings!”