Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/41

 "Come along, my poppet, and have a nice boiled egg."

"Naow," replied Queenie, shaking her head, "ah wanha mar'h."

"She's contankerous like all females," observed Charley, withdrawing a long fish-bone from his mouth. "They're all alike. As I was a-remarking to my woife a bit ago, women is all kittle-cattle, and you can't get away from it. I'm the man as knows, for I had a first woife and foive daughters, a second woife and a daughter, her as you see paradin' herself this minute, and I live in this kitchen surrounded by women, like a oasis in a desert, and I say they're kittle-cattle, and the less a man has to do with any one on 'em the better for his natur', human and otherwise."

"Aw, Mr. Bye, you don't really mean that," said Pearl.

"I allers stick up for the women," said old Davy. "What is a home without a wife? I say it's a hotel without a bar."

"Good, good!" said Pearl. "Davy's got you there, Mr. Bye."

"I grant that's true," said Charley, "but the bar's where all the trouble begins, isn't it? All the contankerousness and noise. I don't ask for anything but peace. I'd like to be back in the Old Land in my truck garden, I would, and breedin' rabbits. I had one old buck rabbit there, that had a natur' so like my own that we was more like brothers than man and rabbit. He felt just the same as I did about the female of the species. And when I think of my lettuces and cabbages settin' there, day arter day, in the same place, just where I'd put them, it brings the tears to my eyes."

A red-headed boy looked in at the door. "Bill Bastien wants you, Charley," he said. "And he says be sharp about it."