“Charawk, chawk, chawk, chawk, chawk, chawk!” shrieked the hindmost hen, hit smartly by the watering-can Mr. Skelmersdale had thrown, and fluttered wildly over Mrs. Glue’s cottage and so into the doctor’s field, while the rest of those Gargantuan birds pursued the pullet, in possession of the child across the vicarage lawn.
“Good heavens!” cried the Curate, or (as some say) something much more manly, and ran, whirling his croquet mallet and shouting, to head off the chase.
“Stop, you wretch!” cried the curate, as though giant hens were the commonest facts in life.
And then, finding he could not possibly intercept her, he hurled his mallet with all his might and main, and out it shot in a gracious curve within a foot or so of Master Skelmersdale’s head and through the glass lantern of the conservatory. Smash! The new conservatory! The Vicar’s wife’s beautiful new conservatory!
It frightened the hen. It might have frightened anyone. She dropped her victim into a Portugal laurel (from which he was presently extracted, disordered but, save for his less delicate garments, uninjured), made a flapping leap for the roof of Fulcher’s stables, put her foot through a weak place in the tiles, and descended, so to speak, out of the infinite into the contemplative quiet of Mr. Bumps the paralytic—who, it is now proved beyond all cavil, did, on this one occasion in his life, get down the entire length of his garden and indoors without any assistance whatever, bolt the door after him, and immediately relapse again into Christian resignation and helpless dependence upon his wife. …
The rest of the pullets were headed off by the other croquet players, and went through the vicar’s kitchen garden into the doctor’s field, to which rendezvous the fifth also came at last, clucking disconsolately after an unsuccessful attempt to walk on the cucumber frames in Mr. Witherspoon’s place.
They seem to have stood about in a hen-like manner for a time, and scratched a little and chirrawked meditatively, and then one pecked at and pecked over a hive of the doctor’s bees, and after that they set off in a gawky, jerky, feathery, fitful sort of way across the fields towards Urshot, and Hickleybrow Street saw them no more. Near Urshot they really came upon commensurate food in a field of swedes; and pecked for a space with gusto, until their fame overtook them.
The chief immediate reaction of this astonishing irruption of gigantic poultry upon the human mind was to arouse an extraordinary passion to whoop and run and throw things, and in quite a little time almost all the available manhood of Hickleybrows and several ladies, were out with a remarkable assortment of flappish and whangable articles in hand—to commence the scooting of the giant hens. They drove them into Urshot, where there was a Rural Fête, and Urshot took them as the crowning glory of a happy day. They began to be shot at near Findon Beeches, but at first only with a rook rifle. Of course birds of that size could absorb an unlimited quantity of small shot without inconvenience. They scattered somewhere near Sevenoaks, and near Tonbridge one of them fled clucking for a time in excessive agitation, somewhat ahead of and parallel with the afternoon boat express—to the great astonishment of everyone therein.
And about half-past five two of them were caught very cleverly by a circus proprietor at Tunbridge Wells, who lured them into a cage, rendered vacant through the death of a widowed dromedary, by scattering cakes and bread. …
VIII
When the unfortunate Skinner got out of the Southeastern train at Urshot that evening it was already nearly dusk. The train was late, but not inordinately late—and Mr. Skinner remarked as much to the stationmaster. Perhaps he saw a certain pregnancy in the stationmaster’s eye. After the briefest hesitation and with a confidential movement of his hand to the side of his mouth he asked if “anything” had happened that day.
“How d’yer mean?” said the stationmaster, a man with a hard, emphatic voice.
“Thethe ’ere waptheth and thingth.”
“We ’aven’t ’ad much time to think of waptheth,” said the stationmaster agreeably. “We’ve been too busy with your brasted ’ens,” and he broke the news of the pullets to Mr. Skinner as one might break the window of an adverse politician.
“You ain’t ’eard anything of Mithith Thkinner?” asked Skinner, amidst that missile shower of pithy information and comment.
“No fear!” said the stationmaster—as though even he drew the line somewhere in the matter of knowledge.
“I mutht make inquireth bout thith,” said Mr. Skinner, edging out of reach of the stationmaster’s concluding generalisations about the responsibility attaching to the excessive nurture of hens. …
Going through Urshot Mr. Skinner was hailed by a lime-burner from the pits over by Hankey and asked if he was looking for his hens.
“You ain’t ’eard anything of Mithith Thkinner?” he asked.
The lime-burner—his exact phrases need not concern us—expressed his superior interest in hens. …
It was already dark—as dark at least as a clear night in the English June can be—when Skinner—or his head at any rate—came into the bar of the Jolly Drovers and said: “ ’Ello! You ’aven’t ’eard anything of thith ere thtory bout my ’enth, ’ave you?”
“Oh, ’aven’t we!” said Mr. Fulcher. “Why, part of the story’s been and bust into my stable roof and one chapter smashed a ’ole in Missis Vicar’s green ’ouse—I beg ’er pardon—Conservarratory.”
Skinner came in. “I’d like thomething a little comforting,” he said, “ ’ot gin and water’th about my figure,” and everybody began to tell him things about the pullets.
“Grathuth me!” said Skinner.
“You ’aven’t ’eard anything about Mithith Thkinner, ’ave you?” he asked in a pause.
“That we ’aven’t!” said Mr. Witherspoon. “We ’aven’t thought of ’er. We ain’t thought nothing of either of you.”
“Ain’t you been ’ome today?” asked Fulcher over a tankard.
“If one of those brasted birds ’ave pecked ’er,” began Mr. Witherspoon and left the full horror to their unaided imaginations. …
It appeared to
