Furze the Cruel. Trevena John

storm disturbed Lewside Cottage, except Dartmoor gales, and as for religion they were sun-worshippers; like most people who come out in fine raiment and glory in the sun, and when it is wet hide indoors, talk of the sun, think of the sun, long for the sun, until he appears and they can hurry out to worship. The savage calls the sun his god in so many words; and the human nature which is in the savage is in the primitive folk of open and desolate places also; it is present in the most civilised of beings, but only those who live on a high moor through the winter know what a day of sunshine means. The sun has places dedicated to him upon Dartmoor. There is Bel Tor and there is Belstone. A tradition of the Phoenician occupation still exists, handed down from the remote time when the sun was directly worshipped. The commoners still believe that good luck will attend the man who shall see the rising sun reflected on the rock-basin of Bellivor. An altar to the sun stood once upon that lonely tor. Weevil worshipped the sun quietly. Boodles offered incense with enthusiasm. She deserved her name when the sun shone upon her radiant head and made a glory round it. When the greater gorse was in flower, and Boodles walked through it hatless, wearing her green frock, she might have been the spirit of the prickly shrub; and like it her head was in bloom all the year round.

      "Have we got anything for supper, Boodle-oodle?" asked the silly old male beetle.

      "Ees, lots," said the small golden one.

      It was not unpleasant to hear Boodles say "ees." She split the word up and made a kind of anthem out of it. The first sound was very soft, a mere whisper, and spoken with closed lips. The rest she sang, getting higher as the final syllable was reached – there were more syllables in the word than letters – then descending at the drawn-out sibilant, and finishing in a whisper with closed lips.

      "Oh, I forgot," she cried. "No eggs!"

      They looked at each other with serious faces. In that simple household small things were tragedies. There were no eggs. It was a matter for serious reflection.

      "Butter?" queried the old man nervously. "Milk? Cheese? Bread?"

      "Heaps, piles, gallons. The kitchen is full of cheese, and you can't move for bread, and the milk is running over and dripping upon everything like a milky day," said penitent Boodles. "I have been saying to myself: 'Eggs, eggs! Yolks, shells, whites – eggs!' I made puns that I shouldn't forget. I egged myself on. I walked delicately, and said: 'I'm treading on eggs.' I kept on scolding myself, and saying: 'Teach your grandmother to suck eggs.' I reminded myself I mustn't put all my eggs in one basket. Then I went and sat in the window, forgot all about them, and now I'm a bad egg."

      "Boodles, what shall we do?" said the chief beetle.

      "I think you ought to torture me in some way," suggested the forgetful one. "Drag me through the furze. Beat me with nettles. Torture would do me a lot of good, I expect, only not too much, because I'm only a baby."

      That was her usual defence. Whatever happened she was only a baby. She was never likely to grow up.

      "Don't jest. It is too serious. If I don't have two eggs for my supper I shall have no sleep. I shall be ill to-morrow."

      "I'll give you two poached kisses," promised Boodles.

      "I cannot exist on spiritual food alone. I must have my eggs. Custom has made it necessary."

      "I'll make you all sorts of nice things," she declared.

      But the eccentric old beetle could not be pacified. He had eggs upon the mind. The produce of the domestic fowl had become an obsession. He explained that if the house had been well stocked with eggs he might have gone without. He would have known they were there to fall back upon if desire should seize him during the silent watches of the night. But the knowledge that the larder was destitute of eggs increased his desire. He would have no peace until the deficiency was made good.

      "Well," said Boodles resignedly, "it's my fault, so I'll suffer for it. I don't want to hear you screaming for eggs all night. I'll go and get wet for your salvation. I expect Mary can let me have some."

      Weevil was himself again. He trotted off for the child's boots. He always put her boots on, and took them off when she came in. Boodles was a little sun-goddess, and as such she accepted adoration. It was part of the tribute due to the sun-like head. When the boots were on – each ankle having previously been worshipped as a part of the tribute – she assumed a jacket, packed her hair under a fluffy green hat, stabbed it on four times with long pins, picked up her walking-stick; and was off, Weevil gazing after her adoringly until she passed out of sight. "There goes the pride o' Devon," murmured the silly old man as the green hat vanished.

      The sight of Boodles took the weather's breath away. It forgot to go on raining; and the sun was so anxious to shine upon her hair that he pushed the clouds off him, as a late slumberer tosses away his blankets, and came out to work a little before evening. It became quite pleasant as Boodles went beside Tavy Cleave.

      Peter was not visible, but Mary was. She was plodding about in her huge boots with an eye upon her geese, especially upon the chief of the flock. Old Sal, who, as usual, was anxious to seek pastures new. When Boodles came up Mary smiled. She was very fond of the child. Boodles seemed to have been made out of such entirely different materials from the odds and ends which had gone towards her own construction. The little girl's soft flesh was as unlike Mary's tough leather as the white bark of the birch is unlike the rugged bark of the oak.

      "Well, Mary, how are you?" said Boodles.

      "I be purty fine, my dear, purty middling fine. Peter be purty fine tu. And how be yew, my dear, and how be the old gentleman? Purty fine yew be, I reckon."

      "We are splendid," said Boodles. "How is the old goose, Mary?"

      "Du'ye mean Old Sal, my dear? There he be trampesing 'bout Dartmoor as though 'twas his'n. Aw, he be purty fine, sure 'nuff."

      "She must be very old," said Boodles.

      "Aw ees, he be old. He be a cruel old artful toad, my dear," said Mary.

      "How old is she?"

      "Well, my dear, he be older than yew. He be twenty-two come next Michaelmas, I'm thinking."

      "You will never kill her?" said Boodles. "You couldn't, after having her for so long. You won't kill her, will you, Mary?"

      "Goosies was made to kill. Us keeps 'en whiles they be useful, and then us kills 'en," said Mary.

      "But twenty-two years old!" cried Boodles. "She would be much too tough to eat."

      "Aw, my dear life," chuckled Mary. "He wouldn't be tough. I would kill 'en, and draw 'en, and rub a little salt in his belly, and hang 'en up for a fortnight, and he would et butiful, my dear."

      Boodles laughed delightfully, and said she thought no amount of salt or hanging, to say nothing of sage and onions, could ever make the venerable Sal palatable.

      "Peter wun't let 'en be killed. Peter loves Old Sal," Mary went on. "He laid sixteen eggs last year, and he'm the best mother on Dartmoor. Aw ees, my dear. He be a cruel fine mother, and Peter ses he shan't die till he've a mind to."

      Then Boodles got to business and asked Mary for eggs, not those of Old Sal, but the produce of the hen-house. Mary said she would go and search. As it was dirty in that region Boodles declined to go with her. "Please to go inside. There be only Gran'vaither. Go and have a look at 'en, my dear," said Mary, who always referred to Grandfather as if he had been a living soul. "Hit 'en in the belly, and make 'en strike at ye."

      Boodles went into Hut Circle Number One, which was Peter's residence, and stood in the presence of Grandfather. Obeying Mary's instructions, she hit him "in the belly." The old sinner made weird noises when thus disturbed. He appeared to resent the treatment, as most old gentlemen would have done. He refused to strike, but he rattled himself, and wheezed, and made sounds suggestive of expectoration. Grandfather was a savage like Peter. He was a rough uneducated sort of clock, and he had no passion for Boodles. Pendoggat would have been the man for him. Grandfather would have shaken hands with Pendoggat had it been possible. His own quivering hands were stretched across his lying face, announcing quarter-past nine when it was really five o'clock. Grandfather was a true man of Devon. He had no sense of time.

      Boodles had nothing but contertipt