CHAPTER XXX A HORSEHEAD PERCH.

I ENJOY the luxury of being absent-minded sometimes. I claim that to be absent-minded once in a while proves that one has a mind to be absent.

I was absent-minded the day that Jack and Billy were expected and I went over to the lake to fish for bass with Sibthorp, with never a thought of them.

The rest of my guests went their various ways and left the house to Ethel and Minerva, and about an hour before train time Ethel realized that I had done nothing about getting the expected arrivals.

“Can you drive a horse, Minerva?” said she.

“I kin sit in the wagon and hold the reins.”

“Well, I guess that’s all that’s necessary, but I can’t even do that. You’ll have to take me down to get the men who are expected.”

“Yas’m.”

“We must go at once and get Mr. Casey’s horse.”

I must explain that Ethel knew that “th’ ould scut” had had the blind staggers the day before and that Pat had explained that he could not have two attacks the same week, as the blood letting simply rejuvenated him.

So the two set off for Pat’s and found him unhitching his horse.

“Oh, have you just been to town?” said Ethel (as she told me afterwards).

“Sure I have. Can I git y’annything there!”

“Why, I wanted to meet two friends who are coming up. If I’d known you were going down—”

“I’d have waited arl night fer them. Annything to oblige a leddy. Take him though, you. He’s gentle as a kitten. Gentler, because I’ve not spared ’im. He’ll not have the blind staggers. I bled him like a pig yestiddy, an’ he’s fresh as the morning.”

As he talked he harnessed him up again and invited the two to get in and he’d turn him around and start them right.

“What’ll I do if anything happens, Mr. Casey?”

“Sit on his head and holler fer help.”

“Oh, of course,” said Ethel. “I read that in a book.”

Minerva went off in an ecstacy of laughter.

“What are you laughing at, Minerva?” asked Ethel.

“I was wonderin’ how you’d get up to his head.”

“Why, Mr. Casey means if he falls down. Don’t you, Mr. Casey?”

“’Deed an’ I do. But he won’t fall down. He’s strarng as a horse an’ gentle as a—as a litter of kittens. He knows it’s a leddy behind him, an’ he’ll have plisant thoughts of you arl the way down. But don’t use the whip. After bleedin’ he’s a bit skitterful.”

We had had the horse several times at a pinch and Ethel knew that he always cautioned against use of the whip, although th’ould scut’s hide was as tough as that famous one “found in the pit where the tanner died.”

“You take the reins, Minerva,” said Ethel.

Minerva took them and pulled them up so tight that she almost yanked the horse into the wagon.

“Oh, he’ll never stumble. A loose rein an’ a kind worrd an’ th’ whip in the socket an’ll he go like the breezes of Ballinasloe. Good bye an’ God bless you.”

And so they started and the horse went along in a leisurely manner as was his wont. Once he strayed off to the roadside to crop the verdant mead and as Minerva pulled on the wrong rein she nearly upset the wagon. But she was quick to learn, and before they had gone a mile Ethel said she drove as if she had been doing it all day.

They found that the horse had the pleasing habit of picking up apples that lay in the road—for their way ran by several apple trees, and there were windfalls in plenty. As he was not checked, every time this happened Ethel felt as if they were going to be pitched out head foremost, but they made their first mile in safety and then the horse, reaching a level stretch “got a gait on him” and trotted along in good shape for nearly half a mile.

When they came to the place called “long hill” Ethel got out so that the horse would have less difficulty in making the descent.

Minerva, innocent as a child as to the proper thing to do, did not tighten the check rein nor did she take in the slack in the reins, but resting her hands idly in her lap chirruped to the horse as she had heard James do, and he began the “perilous descent.”

Half way down he saw a bit of hay in the road, and being of a mind to eat it, he lowered his head at the very moment that he stepped on a loose stone, and the next minute Minerva was over the dashboard, and the horse and she lay in the road together.

She was the first one to pick herself up. In fact she was the only one to do it, as Ethel was several rods away and almost too frightened to stir.

“Quick, Mis. Vernon, come and sit on his head.”

Ethel told me that she did not like the idea at all, but it was a case that called for but one decision. The horse had been loaned to her and if she could save its life by sitting on its head she meant to do it, although she did hope that Minerva would relieve her from time to time.

“I thought we’d divide it up into watches,” she told me, “and I did hope that some wood team would come along soon.”

The horse struggled to rise, but as the hill was steep he found it hard to do and in a minute my wife had seated herself as elegantly as she could on his head, and probably smoothed her skirts over her shoe tops after the manner of womankind.

Minerva, her spirits ebullient as soon as she saw that no damage had been done, went off into a roar of laughter at the quaint spectacle of Ethel using a horse as a sort of couch.

“I wonder if it hurts him?” said Ethel.

“’Deed no. You ain’t heavy enough.”

“Well, if I get tired I’ll want you to come.”

“Lawdy, I’d smash him. He won’t need me.”

“Is anyone coming?”

“No’m.”

“Well, isn’t this too vexing? There are those two men coming.”

“Where?” said Minerva, looking up and down the road.

“No, I mean on the train. Of course they can hire a team, but it is awfully vexing to have this happen.”

“Yas’m. Shall I get you an apple?”

Without waiting for an answer Minerva climbed a rail fence—not without difficulty—and picked up several red astrachans that lay just beyond it. Then she essayed to return, but this time she got caught when half way over and could not extricate herself.

“Mis. Vernon, I’m stuck. Somep’n caught my dress. Come an’ help me.”

“Oh! Dear! I can’t help you. I can’t leave this horse for a minute. There’s no telling what might happen. Isn’t this awful?”

“’Deed it is. Never did think much of that ould scut. What is an ould scut, Mis. Vernon?”

“Oh, it’s just a pet name. Irish people are very affectionate.”

“Never get my affections,” said Minerva, race prejudice cropping out even in her predicament.

All the while she was trying to free herself, and at last she tore herself loose, sacrificing a part of her skirt, and rolled over the fence, the apples scattering in front of her as if in a panic.

But once over she gathered them up and handed one to Ethel, who leaned back along the forehead of her animal sofa and gave herself up to the delights of eating.

“Would the ould scut like one too?” asked Minerva.

“Oh, surely,” said Ethel, and so Minerva picked out a large apple and held it to the velvet nose of the poor old horse. He smelt it eagerly and opening his jaws took it in.

Minerva sat down in the grass of the roadside and fell to, herself, and for a minute, Ethel said, the three jaws crunched apple pulp noisily.

“Mis. Vernon?”

“What is it, Minerva?”

“How come a horse can eat when he’s standin’ up. Lyin’ the way he is now it’s easy because the apple kin go along level, but when he’s standin’ up how can it go way up in his head.”

“Why, he swallows it.”

“Yes, but how can he swallow up? We swallow down. If I was to stand awn my head I couldn’t swallow.”

She was silent a minute and then she said, “Go’n’ to try.”

And try she did.

There in the lonely road, with Ethel reclining so luxuriously on a horse-hair sofa, Minerva played circus and made a croquet wicket of herself and then tried to eat an apple.

Ethel was so interested in the experiment that she was surprised when she heard a masculine voice say, “Well, I swan!”

She turned, and there below her in the road stood the figure of the Perkins’ hired man.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come,” said Ethel from her perch. “What’s the proper thing to do to this horse?”

“Well, I’d git off his head first off.”

Ethel left her seat, the hired man took hold of the bridle, the horse made one or two tries and then rose to his feet and Ethel said he

She made a croquet wicket of herself.

shook himself so violently that she thought the harness would break.

But it stayed together in all its knotted parts and Minerva, somewhat shamefaced at having been caught trying to swallow like a horse, climbed up into the wagon and my wife drove on down town, where she arrived just as Jack and Billy were about concluding a dicker with a hackman.

When they saw th’ ould scut they concluded the dicker—Ethel having introduced herself, and then they insisted that she ride up with them, while Minerva followed after with the grips.

Sibthorp and I and no fish arrived home simultaneously with my guests.

The meeting of Billy and Cherry was most affecting. They acted like school children over each other. It struck me at the time how much more a woman will palaver over a man if she does not care for him in any other than a Platonic way than she will when her affections are engaged.

It is also queer how some men express themselves more fully in their letters than they do in their actions.

Billy was much quieter than Tom, and Jack was almost reserved.

But the same air that has a lazing effect on writers braces up artists to do good work. Tom had painted two landscapes since his arrival and Billy and Jack went out after supper and each took a shy at the same sunset.

It was curious to see how different were the colors each used.

And the sun had used another palette altogether. And yet all three sunsets were beautiful and I dare say that one was as true as the other, all of them being illusions.