“Yus you have,” he persisted; “you’ve got that cow.”
She had stopped bellowing for a moment. She was not the cow I felt I could ever take a pride in. At some time or another, quite recently, she must have sat down in some mud.
“The young lydy,” explained the boy, “she came rahnd to our plice on Tuesday—”
I began to see light. “An excitable young lady—talks very fast—never waits for the answer?”
“With jolly fine eyes,” added the boy approvingly.
“Didn’t seem to ’ave strength enough to live another dy withaht it.”
“Any stipulation made concerning the price of the cow?”
“The young lady with the eyes—did she think to ask the price of the cow?”
“No sordid details was entered into, so far as I could ’ear,” replied the boy.
“Any hint let fall as to what the cow was wanted for?”
“The lydy gives us to understand,” said the boy, “that fresh milk was ’er idea.”
That surprised me: that was thoughtful of Robina. “And this is the cow?”
“I towed her rahnd last night. I didn’t knock at the door and tell yer abaht ’er, cos, to be quite frank with yer, there wasn’t anybody in.”
“Well,” said the boy, “it’s only a theory, o’ course, but I should sy, from the look of ’er, that she wanted to be milked.”
“But it started bellowing at half-past two,” I argued. “It doesn’t expect to be milked at half-past two, does it?”
“Meself,” said the boy, “I’ve given up looking for sense in cows.”
In some unaccountable way this boy was hypnotising me. Everything had suddenly become out of place.
The cow had suddenly become absurd: she ought to have been a milk-can. The wood struck me as neglected: there ought to have been notice-boards about, “Keep off the Grass,” “Smoking Strictly Prohibited”: there wasn’t a seat to be seen. The cottage had surely got itself there by accident: where was the street? The birds were all out of their cages; everything was upside down.
“Are you a real farmer’s boy?” I asked him.
“O’ course I am,” he answered. “What do yer tike me for—a hartist in disguise?”
Here was a nice beginning to a rural life! What place could be the country while this boy Hopkins was about? He would have given to the Garden of Eden the atmosphere of an outlying suburb.
“Do you want to earn an occasional shilling?” I put it to him.