Pony Billy passed several more doors. Old Tiny, the sow, was snoring peacefully behind one of them. He drew the cart round the end of the shippon [44] into a cobble-paved yard, where the wheels rumbled over the stones. He went up to the back door of the house. There was no light upstairs; the window panes twinkled in the moonlight. A faint red glow showed through the kitchen window and under the back door.

SHE SAT BEFORE THE HOT WOOD ASH AND PURRED.

Mary Ellen, the farm cat, sat within; purring gently, and staring at the hot white ashes on the open hearth; wood ash that burns low, but never dies for years. She sat on a dun-coloured deer-skin, spread on the kitchen flags. Pots and pans, buckets, firewood, coppy stools,[10] cumbered the floor; and a great brown cream mug was set to warm before the hearth against the morrow’s churning. The half-stone weight belonging to the butter scales was on the board that covered the mug; Mary Ellen had not been sampling the cream. She sat before the hot wood ash and purred. Crickets were chirping. All else was asleep in the silent house.

Mary Ellen listened to the sounds of wheels and horseshoes, which came right up to the porch. Pony Billy’s soft nose snuffled about the latch. He struck a light knock on the door with a forward swing of his forefoot. Mary Ellen arose from the hearth. She went towards the door, and looked through a crack between the door and the door-jamb.

“Good-evening, good Pony; good-evening to you, Sir! I would bid you come in by, only the door is locked. Snecks I can lift; but the key is upstairs.” Pony Billy explained his errand through the crack.

“Dear, dearie me! poor, poor young pig!” purred Mary Ellen, “and me shut up here, accidental-like, with the cream! Dearie, dearie me, now! to think of that! Asleep in the clothes-swill, I was, when the door got locked. Yes! indeed, I do understand pig powders and herbs and clisters and cataplasms and nutritions and triapharmacons etcy teera, etcy teera!” purred Mary Ellen, “but pray, how am I to be got out, without the door key?” Pony Billy pawed the cobblestones with an impatient hoof.

“Let me see, good Mr. Pony, do you think that you could push away that block of wood that is set against a broken pane in the pantry window? Yes? Now I will put on my shawly shawl; so,” purred Mary Ellen, “so! I am stout, and the hole is small. Dearie, dearie me! what a squeeze! I am afraid of broken glass. But there is nothing like trying!” purred Mary Ellen, safely outside upon the pantry window-sill. “Now I can jump down into your cart, if you will back, under the windy pindy.”  “First rate! Are you ready, M’mam?” said Pony Billy, backing against the wall with a bump.

“Oh, dearie me! I have clean forgotten the herbs; I must climb in again! Bunches and bunches of herbs!” purred Mary Ellen, pausing on the window-sill, above the cart. “My Mistress Scales grows a plant of rue on purpose for poor sick piggy-wiggies. Herb of Grace!” purred Mary Ellen,“what says old Gerard in the big calfskin book? ‘St. Anthony’s fire is quenched therewith; it killeth the shingles. Twelve pennyweight of rue is a counter-poison to the poison of wolfs-bane; and mushrooms; and TOADSTOOLS; and the bite of serpents; and the sting of scorpions, and hornets, and bees, and wasps; in-so-much that if the weasel is to fight the serpent, she armeth herself by eating rue.’ Toadstools! it says so in the big book! the very thing!” purred Mary Ellen, squeezing inside, and disappearing into the pantry. “Bunches and bunches of herbs,” she purred, struggling out again through the broken window; “bunches and bunches hanging from the kitchen ceiling! And a pot of goose-grease on the jam board; and a gun. And onions. And a lambing crook. And a fishing rod. And a brass meat-jack that winds up.”

“Am I to take all these things, M’mam?” inquired Pony Billy. “Bless me no! only the herbs,” purred Mary Ellen, seating herself in the cart. But no sooner had Pony Billy turned it in the yard, preparing to start homewards, “Oh, dearie, dearie me! I’ve forgot my fur-lined boots! No, not through the window this time. I keep my wardrobe in the stick-house. And I would like an armful of brackens in the cart-kist, to keep my footsies warm, please Mr. Pony Billy.”  “We shall get away sometime!”thought Pony William.

Once set off, Mary Ellen sat quietly enough; never moving anything excepting her head, which she turned sharply from side to side, at the slightest rustle in the woods, hoping to see rabbits. The roe-deer did not show themselves again. The journey back to Codlin Croft Farm was uneventful. Mary Ellen was set down safely at the stable door. Cheesebox welcomed her effusively.

After assuring himself that Paddy Pig was still alive and kicking, Pony Billy dragged the tilt-cart into the orchard, and tipped it up beside the caravan. Himself he went up to the haystack for a well-earned bite of supper. Afterwards he lay down on the west side of the stack; and slept there, sheltered from the wind.

CHAPTER XIX

Mary Ellen

Mary Ellen was a fat tabby cat with sore eyes, and white paws, and an unnecessarily purry manner. If people only looked at her she purred, and scrubbed her head against them. She meant well; but she drove Paddy Pig wild. “Was it a leetle sick piggy-wiggy? was it cold then?” purred Mary Ellen, working her claws into the horseblanket and squirming it upwards. The result was that the top of the blanket got into Paddy Pig’s mouth, whilst his hind feet were left bare and cold.

“Bless its little pettitoes! No, it must not kick its blanket off its beddee beddee!”  “What, what, what? I’m snuffocated! Sandy! Sandy! Take away this cat! I’m skumfished!”  “Was it a leetle fidgetty pidgetty—”  “Sandy, I say! Take away this awful cat!” screamed Paddy Pig.

At that moment Cheesebox entered the stable carrying a jug of rue tea,“He sounds very fractious. Keep him flat, Mary Ellen.” Paddy Pig sat up violently under the blanket, “Bring me a bucketful of pig-wash! None of your cat lap!”  “Rue tea,” purred Mary Ellen; “my Mrs. Scales always prescribes nice rue tea in a little china cuppy cuppy, for poor sick piggy-wiggies with tummyakies.”

Paddy Pig swallowed the rue tea, under protest. He was sick immediately in spite of the expostulations of the two cats. Maggret, the mare in the next stall, blew her nose and stamped. After he had exhausted himself with kicking and squealing, Paddy Pig sank into uneasy slumber. But every time he turned over he kicked off the blanket, and there was another cat fight.

Towards midnight he grew quieter. The cats sat up all night; wide awake and watchful. There were noises of rats in the old walls of the stable; and noises of night birds without. Twice during the small hours of the morning Sandy’s black nose appeared under the stable door. He listened to the patient’s uneasy breathing, and then returned to his straw bed underneath the caravan.

At 2 A. M. the cats made themselves a dish of tea (proper tea, made of tea leaves). It enlivened them to endless purring conversations. They gossiped about other cats of their acquaintance. About our cat Tamsine, and her fifteenth family of kittens. And how Tamsine once was lost for a whole week, and came home very thin. And after all, she had been no further off than the next-door house, which was shut up empty, while the tenants had gone away for a week’s holiday. But what had Tamsine been doing to get herself locked up in the next-door pantry, I wonder?“Perhaps she was catching dear little mousy mousies,” purred Mary Ellen. “She did not look as though she had eaten many. And to think that her people had heard her mewing, and had searched for her high and low, never guessing that the next-door house was locked up unoccupied!”