to bring in than in the prospect of the pleasure they are going to bear forth.
And as for Peter, Peter is breeding his flock after a theory of his own, that he has never before had the opportunity to put into practice—and it is succeeding! “Ross’s brand” begins to be favourably known in the sale-yards. With his Orpingtons, too, he is experimenting, and his white Leghorns; and this year he has fifteen coops of them, all fine birds. Strawberries again—he grows three varieties of strawberries, and deeply are they loved, and jealously attended. Out of sympathy for Peter and his strawberries, Catherine has learned to detest the pilfering blackbirds—who, at Home and landless, once she loved. The other day, even, so she confessed to me in a whisper (a little bit shamefaced, like one having consciously done a rather unwomanly thing), with Peter’s pea-rifle she actually shot one! impudently feasting before her very eyes, while Peter was in town; and she keeps, too, a dreadful little Bluebeard’s Chamber of a box, full of dried blackbirds’ heads, for which she now and then proudly claims so many pence per dozen from the authorities. “And pence are pence,” says thrifty Catherine. “I made my best hat over again the other day, and fourpence was all it cost me. You might say it was trimmed by the blackbirds, now, mightn’t you?” I was reminded, a little dolefully, of the four and twenty blackbirds that went to make a pie; but Catherine pointed out that she was now, first and foremost and last, and for good and all, a practical farmer’s wife, and had no time for sentimentalising over blackbirds’ rights—and no doubt she was wise.
