The Book of Small (6 page)

The straight outline of the cow's back in front of Small was like a range of mountains with low hills and little valleys. The tail end of the cow was as square as a box. Horns were her only curve—back, front, tail, neck and nose in profile, were all straight lines. Even the slobber dripping from her chin fell in slithery streaks.

When Small began to sing the old cow's nose-line shot from straight down to straight out, her chin rose into the air, her jaws rolled. The harder Small sang, the harder the cow chewed and the faster she twiddled her ears around as if stirring the song into the food to be rechewed in cud along with her breakfast.

Small loved her cow-yard audience—hens twisting their silly heads and clawing the earth with mincing feet, their down eye looking for grubs, their up eye peering at Small, ducks trying hard to out-quack the song, pigeons clapping their white wings, rabbits hoisting and sinking their noses—whether in appreciation or derision Small could never tell.

WHITE FLUTTERED THROUGH
the cow-yard gate, Bigger's apron heralding an agitated Bigger, both hands wrestling with the buttons of her apron behind and her tongue ready sharpened to attack Small's singing.

“It's disgusting! Stop that vulgar row, Small! What must the neighbours think? Stop it, I say!”

Small sang harder, bellowing the words. “The cow likes it and this is her yard.”

“I wish to goodness that she would roof her yard then, or that you would sing under an umbrella, Small, and so keep the sound down and not let it boil over the fences. There's the breakfast bell! Throw that fowl out of your lap and come! Song before breakfast means tears before night.”

“Whose tears—mine, the cow's or the rooster's?”

“Oh, oh, oh! That cow-brute has dripped slobber down my clean apron! You're a disgusting pair,” shrieked Bigger and rushed from the yard.

BREAKFAST OVER, THE
Elder detained Small.

“Small, this singing of yours is scandalous! Yesterday I was walking up the street with a lady. Half a block from our gate she stopped dead. ‘Listen! Someone is in trouble,' she said. How do you think I felt saying,‘ Oh, no, it is only my little sister singing'?”

Small reddened but said stubbornly, “The cow likes my singing.”

Cows are different from humans; perhaps the hairiness of their ears strains sound.

THE BISHOP CAME
to pay a sick-visit to Small's mother. He prayed and Small watched and listened. His deliberate chewing of the words, with closed eyes, reminded her of the cow chewing her cud. The Bishop was squarely built, a slow calm man. “They are very alike,” thought Small.

Rising from his knees, the Bishop, aware of the little girl's stare, said, “You grow, child!”

“She does,” said Small's mother. “So does her voice; her singing is rather a family problem.”

“Song is good,” replied Bishop. “Is it hymns you sing, child?”

“No, Mr. Bishop, I prefer cow-songs.”

The Bishop's “a-a-h!” long-drawn and flat lasted all the way down the stairs.

“You should not have said that,” said Small's mother. “A Bishop is a Bishop.”

“And a cow is a cow. Is it so wicked to sing to a cow?”

“Not wicked at all. I love your happy cow-yard songs coming into my window. We will have your voice trained some day. Then perhaps the others will not scold so much about your singing.”

“But will the cow like my voice squeezed little and polite? It
won't be half so much fun singing beautifully as boiling over like the jam kettle.”

SMALL'S FOUR SISTERS
and her brother went holidaying to a farm in Metchosin. Small was left at home with her mother. Just at first Small, to whom animal life was so dear, felt a pang that she was not of the farm party. But the quiet of the empty house was a new experience and something happened.

Mrs. Gregory, her mother's friend of long standing, came to spend an afternoon.

Both ladies were nearing the age of fifty—straight-backed, neatly made little ladies who sat primly on the horsehair chairs in the drawing-room wearing little lace-trimmed matron's caps and stitching each on a piece of plain sewing as they chatted.

Having exchanged recipes for puddings, discussed the virtue of red flannel as against white, the problem of Chinese help and the sewing-circle where they made brown holland aprons for orphans, all topics were exhausted.

They sewed in silence, broken after a bit by Mrs. Gregory saying, “There was English mail this morning, Emily. Do you ever get homesick for the Old Country?”

Small's mother looked with empty eyes across the garden. “My home and my family are here,” she replied.

The ladies began “remembering.” One would say, “Do you remember?” and the other would say, “I call to mind.” Soon this remembering carried them right away from that Canadian drawing-room. They were back in Devonshire lanes, girl brides rambling along with their Richard and William, pausing now and then to gather primroses and to listen to the larks and cuckoos.

Small's mother said, “Richard was always one for wanting to see new countries.”

“My William's hobby,” said Mrs. Gregory, “was growing things. Here or there made no difference to him as long as there was earth to dig and flowers to grow.”

Small knew that Richard and William were her Father and Mr. Gregory or she would never have recognized the ladies' two jokey boys of the Devonshire lanes in the grave middle-aged men she knew as her father and Mrs. Gregory's husband.

The ladies laid their sewing upon the table and, dropping their hands into their laps, sat idle, relaxing their shoulders into the hard backs of the chairs. Small felt it extraordinary to see them doing nothing, to see Canada suddenly spill out of their eyes as if a dam had burst and let the pent-up England behind drown Canada, to see them sitting in real chairs and yet not there at all.

The house was quite still. In the yard Bong was chopping kindling and droning a little Chinese song.

Suddenly Mrs. Gregory said, “Emily, let's sing!” and began:

“I cannot sing the old songs now I sang long years ago…”

Small's mother joined, no shyness, no hesitation. The two rusty little voices lifted, found to their amazement that they
could
sing the old songs still, and their voices got stronger and stronger with each song.

Sitting on a stool between them, half hidden by the table-cloth and entirely forgotten by the ladies, Small watched and listened, saw their still fingers, unornamented except for the plain gold band on the third left of each hand, lying in sober-coloured stuff-dress laps, little white caps perched on hair yet brown, lace jabots pinned under their chins by huge brooches. Mrs. Gregory's brooch was composed of tiny flowers woven from human hair grown on the
heads of various members of her family. The flowers were glassed over the top and framed in gold, and there were earrings to match dangling from her ears. The brooch Small's mother wore was made of quartz with veins of gold running through it. Richard had dug the quartz himself from the California gold mines and had had it mounted in gold for his wife with earrings of the same.

Each lady had winds and winds of thin gold watch-chain round her neck, chains which tethered gold watches hiding in stitched pockets on the fronts of their dresses. There the ladies' hearts and their watches could tick duets.

Small sat still as a mouse. The singing was as solemn to her as church. She had always supposed that Mother-ladies stopped singing when there were no more babies in their nurseries to be sung to. Here were two ladies nearly fifty years old, throwing back their heads to sing love songs, nursery songs, hymns, “God Save the Queen,” “Rule Britannia”—songs that spilled over the drawing-room as easily as Small's cow songs spilled over the yard, only Small's songs were new, fresh grass snatched as the cow snatched pasture grass. The ladies' songs were rechews—cudded fodder.

Small sneezed!

Two mouths snapped like mousetraps! Four cheeks flushed! Seizing her sewing, Mrs. Gregory said sharply, “Hunt my thimble, child!”

Small's mother said, “I clean forgot the tea,” and hurried from the room.

SMALL NEVER TOLD
a soul about that singing but now, when she sat on the cow-yard woodpile she raised her chin and sang clean over the cow's back, over the yard and over the garden, straight into her mother's window… let Bigger and the Elder scold!

THE WICKER CHAIR
was new and had a crisp creak. At a quarter to eight every morning Father sat in it to read family prayers. The little book the prayers came out of was sewed into a black calico pinafore because its own cover was a vivid colour and Father did not think that was reverent.

The Elder, a sister much older than the rest of the children, knelt before a hard, straight chair: Mother and little Dick knelt together at a low soft chair. The three little girls, Bigger, Middle, and Small usually knelt in the bay window and buried their faces in its cushioned seat but Small's Father liked her to kneel beside him sometimes. If she did not get her face down quickly he beckoned and Small had to go from the window-seat to under the arm of the wicker chair. It was stuffy under there. Small liked the window-seat best, where she could peep and count how many morning-glories were out, how many new rosebuds climbing to look in through the window at her.

Father's wicker chair helped pray. It creaked and whispered more than the children would ever have dared to. When finally Father leaned across the arm to reach for the cross-work bookmark he
had laid on the table during prayers, the chair squawked a perfectly grand amen.

One morning Father had a bit of gout and Small thought that instead of amen Father said “Ouch!” She could not be quite sure because just at the very moment that the chair amened, Tibby, the cat, gave a tremendous “meow” and a splendid idea popped into Small's head.

Small had wanted a dog—she did not remember how long she had wanted it—it must have been from the beginning of the world. The bigger she got the harder she wanted.

As soon as everyone had gone about their day's business Small took Tibby and went back to the praying chair.

“Look, Tibby, let's you and me and the praying chair ask God to give you a puppy for me. Hens get ducks, why couldn't you get a puppy? Father always sits in that chair to pray. It must be a good chair; it amens splendidly. I'll do the words: you and the chair can amen. I don't mind what kind of a puppy it is as long as it's alive.”

She tipped the chair and poked Tibby underneath into the cage-like base. Tibby left her tail out.

“So much the better,” said Small. “It'll pinch when the time for amen is ready.”

Tibby's amen was so effective that Small's Mother came to see what was the trouble.

“Poor cat! Her tail is pinched. Take her out into the garden, Small.”

“It's all spoilt now!”

“What is?”

“We were praying for a puppy.”

“Your father won't hear of a puppy in his garden, Small.”

SMALL'S BIRTHDAY WAS
coming.

The Elder said, “I know something that is coming for your birthday!”

“Is it—is it—”

“Wait and see.”

“Does it commence with ‘d'? Or, if it's just a little one, maybe with ‘p'?”

“I think it does.”

The day before the great day Small's singing was a greater nuisance than usual. Everyone scolded till she danced off to the woodshed to sing there, selected three boxes of varying sizes and brushed them out.

“Which size will fit him? Middle, when you got your new hair-brush what did you do with the old one?”

“Threw it out.”

Small searched the rubbish pile which was waiting for the spring bonfire and found the brush-back with its few remaining bristles.

“A lot of brushing with a few is as good as a little brushing with a lot…”

“Rosie,” she said to the wax doll whose face had melted smooth because a mother, careless of dead dolls, had left her sitting in the sun, “Rosie, I shall give your woollie to my new pup. You are all cold anyhow. You melt if you are warmed. Pups are live and shivery…”

“He… she… Oh, Rosie what
shall
I do if it's a she? It took years to think up a good enough name and it's a boy's name. Oh, well, if it's a girl she'll have thousands of puppies; the Elder says they always do.”

She plaited a collar of bright braid, sewing on three hooks and eyes at varying distances.

“Will he be so big—or so big—or so big? I don't care about his size or shape or colour as long as he's alive.”

She put the collar into the pocket of tomorrow's clean pinafore.

“Hurry up and go, day, so that tomorrow can come!” And she went off to bed so as to hurry night.

SMALL'S FATHER DREW
back the front-door bolt; that only half unlocked the new day—the little prayerbook in its drab covering did the rest. It seemed a terrible time before the chair arm squeaked amen. The Elder rose, slow as a snail. Small wanted to shout, “Hurry, hurry! Get the pup for me!”

Everyone kissed Small for her birthday; then all went into the breakfast room. On Small's plate was a flat, flat parcel. Small's eyes filled, drowning the gladness.

“Open it!” shouted everyone.

The Elder cut the string. “I am glad to see,” she remarked, noting Small's quivering blue hands, “that you did not shirk your cold bath because it was your birthday.”

The present was the picture of a little girl holding a dog in her arms.

“She looks like you,” said Middle.

“No, she isn't like me, she has a dog.”

SMALL WENT TO
the fire pretending to warm her blue hands. She took something from her apron pocket, dropped it into the flames.

“I'm not hungry—can I go and feed my ducks?” In the cow yard she could cry.