ANOTHER EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF MISS TABITHA

TRENOODLE

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BY THE AUTHOR OF KIDDLE-A-WINK," MILDRED'S WEDDING," ETC.

DID you ever drive a cow to pound?

No, of course not.

Did your mother ever drive a cow to pound? or your wife?

Of course not, again.

Well, I have. I, Tabitha Trenoodle, of Tregawk, spinster, drove a large brindled knot cow to pound. And since I am neither first cousin to Mrs. Squeamish, nor first toady to Mrs. Grundy, I see no reason whatever why I should deny the fact.

Perhaps up in England folks mayn't know what a knot cow is, I have heard there's a good deal of ignorance in London; and people at the West-end can scarcely tell a mabyer from a mugget. Well, a knot cow is a cow without horns, having a little knot or knob on the head instead of those appendages. If that brindle had had horns, I don't think well, yes, I'll confess it-I don't think I should have driven her to pound.

I object to horns. They have an ugly look; and they give me a sort of a ripping feeling, highly unpleasant, in my backbone. Moreover, they make me say over to myself all the "ifs" and "ands" in the alphabet.

"If that beast knew his strength, and just took it into his head"then a cold shiver, and I feel very glad I'm walking a long way behind the creature's tail.

In another minute I'm conjugating "ifs" again, because the animal has turned and looked me mildly in the face.

"If he means mischief now by that look, and-" I catch up my long dress, and wonder, after a good run, whether I could take the next hedge at a flying leap. Then I begin thinking if I could climb a tree, or if a woman ever has climbed a tree, since Eve, without any impediments, clambered to a top branch after that unfortunate apple. That's how I go on, if ever I'm near a horned creature. So, in towns I dash into shops out of the way of horns; and in the country I tear off at full speed, with an imaginary horn in my back, all the way till I drop. As a child, I ran from a horned snail, and a stag's-horn beetle I once took for a small devil, out for a walk without his nursemaid.

I've got a little meadow at Tregawk. I'm rather proud of it, be* Mabyer, a fowl; mugget, a calf's tripe.

VOL. V.

KK

cause it's the best land and grows the best grass for miles round. The granite doesn't show up through the soil in ever so many places at once, as it does elsewhere in the parish.

Now when a person has got a meadow with good grass in it, that person doesn't like the grass to be eaten up night after night, nobody knows how. At least, I don't. My maid suggested:

"Evul sperruts."

I said, "Stuff! Evil spirits don't eat grass: they devour men." Then she said: "Veers."

Now I believe Veer is a grand name in England; and I have heard of a Lady Clara Veer de Veer who cut somebody's throat in a grand way, and wasn't found out. But with us veers are little pigs; and in some parishes heifers are called veers too. So you see it is not such a noble name with us, that I was going to be startled at the idea of a veer eating up my grass.

"No signs of 'em," I answered. "Nothing nuzzled up." "Nebuchadnezzar," said my maid.

"Nonsense! He's dead and gone these hundred years." "Not him. Her-the passon's wife."

This seems ridiculous. But it was not, because that poor howling maniac fancied herself Nebuchadnezzar; and she was always trying to get out and eat grass. She took to calling herself the King of Babylon at first through fun, because of the herb-pies she ate down in Cornwall, and because her husband's name was Daniel. Then getting a little wild,-through loneliness, as she chose to say-she stuck to her fancy. In fact, it got to be what the doctors call a fixed idea-though where fixed, or how, I can't say.

"My dear Miss Trenoodle," she used to say to me at times, "do you think there are any cabs and omnibuses up in London still? I should like to see 'em," she said. "I should like to hear 'em.”

"Then you'd like to hear a great row," I answered. "And what pleasure there can be in seeing a heap of tired horses and fagged men and rattling vehicles pooting about and twisting in and out and up and down like angle-twitches in the mud, is more than a rational being can understand. I should go crazy amongst 'em, and feel like a lunatic asylum in my head, with the keys lost, and the doctor of the establishment intoxicated-that's how I should feel in London."

"That's just how I feel down here," she said sighing dismally. "Then why did you come?" I asked quite snappishly. "Why didn't you marry a cabman, and live in the Tower ?"

"Daniel," she said shaking her head-"Daniel. came. But I didn't know what he was bringing me to. society; parsley pies, and the sea on both sides of me, and two fiddles in the church."

That's why I

No parties, no and a bassoon

"Why not two fiddles, or three, or six, if we could get 'em?" "Why not?" she cried, staring at me as hard as a goose at Michael

mas-"Why not? O dear me, I can't tell you! I'm going away now to teach my canaries German. I'm very busy. They'll sing in German soon. Why not?"

I saw it was of no use talking to a fool, so I departed.

I have no doubt she fancied Daniel was going to bring down by rail, for her especial accommodation, a few slices of London streets, cabs and all, with a dozen miles or so of fog-for sky nobody can call it full of bad air and dirt, and other creatures wandering promiscuous up and down the roofs and throats of human beings, who ought to be drinking fresh air and eating fresh vegetables, which are too dear for any lady's pocket, leave alone being cag-magged about at greengrocers, which is a name for gardeners I never heard till I got to London.

Of course after this long explanation, you'll understand I was not surprised, when my maid Temper-Temperance is her right name— suggested that the parson's wife ate my grass.

"She is capable," I observed; " so I'll watch."

Accordingly that night I make Temper bring down into the fields the small kitchen table and a big stool, and by aid of these I clamber up pretty high into a tree, where I sit perched like Charles the Second in a crinoline. Temper stayed with me till nearly dark, and brought me my tea out there, as I had got into the tree quite early, thinking it wise to be in time. She had to climb to the top of the table to hand up the cups, and I found it rather novel, though a sofa cushion on the branch might have improved the situation.

When it grew dusk I made Temper leave, lugging the table with her of course, lest it should attract Mrs. Nebuchadnezzar's attention. I screamed after her for a cushion, but she did not hear me.

After nightfall, I thought of Charles the Second, and Robinson Crusoe, and Prince Absolom, till I didn't know which was which, or whether I was one or the other of them. Then cramp came on for want of that cushion, after that the shivers, then the cramp again. And my limbs took a kind of spontaneous locomotion, and wouldn't stay in any place where I put 'em. I was just thinking that African travellers told awful stories, about sleeping up trees with snakes and things, when suddenly I heard steps.

"No! it can't be !" I said, bumping myself frightfully, forgetting my sofa cushion was at home. "Surely she won't carry out her ideas of Nebuchadnezzar as far as this, in my meadow too, to eat grass! Poor thing! Herb-pies indeed! Herb-pies are not grass; it's a judg ment on her for despising good victuals."

Harder steps, thick bootish steps, lumpy, then the gate swings, and I see coming into my field a big cow, with a man behind her! As the gate swings to and fro, and at last shuts, the man stays outside it, and leaning on the top rail he grins. I saw his grin in the moonlight quite plainly, a very plain grin it was, and if the skirt of my dress had not