Page:Possession (Roche, February 1923).pdf/228

 with the clutch of shiny, stained eggs. Fawnie took up one egg after another and shook it. "Slop," she said, curtly.

"This has got to stop," Derek said. "Throw those pieces of broken bricks on the eggs and then an armful of brushwood, then I'll put her down."

The white hen looked down from Derek's arms at the demolition of her hopes. She made no protest, but the pale pink of her wattles took a deeper hue. She blinked. When all was destroyed Derek set her down. He did not pull out her tail feathers nor kick her, but he gave her a shake, and a push with his foot, and said: "Now, be off with you! and try to think of something besides sitting. There are other things in the world, believe me."

She stood poised for a moment on tiptoe, flapping her pale unused wings, then, with a harsh, croaking cry, she began to run from them into the fog. An eerie figure, she disappeared into its ready embrace with that one cry of frustrated instincts. The flock of sheep, suddenly emerging from nowhere it seemed, parted their ranks hurriedly to let her pass. It was her last supreme gesture. Derek never saw her again.

Derek's house was not kept as it had been in Mrs. Machin's time. Fawnie had an unbelievable talent for disorder, and, as the baby spent most of his day in the kitchen, Phœbe allowed her dishes to pile up until the table and dresser were hidden beneath them. To Derek she seemed always to be sitting nursing him while he thumped on the table with a spoon or slobbered over an apple which he gnawed with his four ridiculous milk-teeth. Often noisy quarrels occurred between mistress and maid.

"Oh, for any sake let me get one thing done before you're after me about another!" Phœbe would shout, and