As my first distinct glimpse into matrimony it stands far back and detached; after it, in the Bayeux tapestry of childhood, horses, dogs, and baffled governesses moved on in untiring confusion, for periods of unmeasured time, before the subject again presented itself.
There lives in my memory a Sunday morning in spring, when the little beech leaves were poised like pale green moths among the bare branches, and the northerly showers whipped the lambs into shelter. The servants had gone in a body to early mass, leaving the preparations for breakfast in the hands of Tom Cashen, a trusted friend and counsellor, whose ordinary business it was to attend to the affairs of the yard and its pigs.
There was soda-bread to be watched in the oven, there were saucepans and kettles resolved upon untimely boiling, there was porridge to be stirred, and there was also Tom Cashen's dog, a hungry, furtive thing, capable at any moment of clearing the table of all that was upon it. The moment came, as it comes to those who wait with complete attentiveness, and Tom Cashen's dog did not let it slip. It was during the retributions of justice that the bread burned in the oven, the coffee boiled over on the range, and the porridge adhered massively to the bottom of the saucepan.
"I'd sooner be digging the clay from morning till night," said Tom Cashen, after a long and prayerful imprecation, "than to be at this kind of work. There isn't a man in the world without getting married but he's sure to die quare, and no wonder, from the work that's within!"
Translated into our inferior English this aphorism sets forth the opinion that a bachelor who has to do his own household work is bound to end his days in a lunatic asylum. This view of matrimony had not before been heard by me, and it seemed to be wholly reasonable. For one thing, the men in the yard were always right in our eyes, and always full of just complaints against the kitchen; in any case, the Work that was Within--the arduous triflings with saucepans and sweeping-brushes--was certainly contemptible as compared with the realities and the fascinations of the stable and the hay-cart. The point of view of Mrs. Tom Cashen was not touched upon; I think I realised that she was not likely to have one.