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Of course his character is largely the result of polygamy. His weaknesses are only what might be expected; and as for the hens, I have considerable respect for the patience, sobriety, and dignity with which they endure an institution particularly offensive to all women. In their case they do not even have the sustaining thought of its being an article of religion, so they are to be complimented the more.

There is nothing on earth so feminine as a hen–not womanly, simply feminine. Those men of insight who write the Woman’s Page in the Sunday newspapers study hens more than women, I sometimes think; at any rate, their favourite types are all present on this poultry farm.

Some families of White Leghorns spend most of their time in the rickyard, where they look extremely pretty, their slender white shapes and red combs and wattles well set off by the background of golden hayricks. There is a great oak-tree in one corner, with a tall ladder leaning against its trunk, and a capital roosting-place on a long branch running at right angles with the ladder. I try to spend a quarter of an hour there every night before supper, just for the pleasure of seeing the feathered “women-folks” mount that ladder.

A dozen of them surround the foot, waiting restlessly for their turn. One little white lady flutters up on the lowest round and perches there until she reviews the past, faces the present, and forecasts the future; during which time she is gathering courage for the next jump. She cackles, takes up one foot and then the other, tilts back and forth, holds up her skirts and drops them again, cocks her head nervously to see whether they are all staring at her below, gives half a dozen preliminary springs which mean nothing, declares she can’t and won’t go up any faster, unties her bonnet strings and pushes back her hair, pulls down her dress to cover her toes, and finally alights on the next round, swaying to and fro until she gains her equilibrium, when she proceeds to enact the same scene over again.

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.