No storm disturbed Lewside Cottage, except Dartmoor gales, and as for
religion they were sun-worshippers; like most people who come out in
fine raiment and glory in the sun, and when it is wet hide indoors, talk
of the sun, think of the sun, long for the sun, until he appears and
they can hurry out to worship. The savage calls the sun his god in so
many words; and the human nature which is in the savage is in the
primitive folk of open and desolate places also; it is present in the
most civilised of beings, but only those who live on a high moor through
the winter know what a day of sunshine means. The sun has places
dedicated to him upon Dartmoor. There is Bel Tor and there is Belstone.
A tradition of the Phoenician occupation still exists, handed down from
the remote time when the sun was directly worshipped. The commoners
still believe that good luck will attend the man who shall see the
rising sun reflected on the rock-basin of Bellivor. An altar to the sun
stood once upon that lonely tor. Weevil worshipped the sun quietly.
Boodles offered incense with enthusiasm. She deserved her name when the
sun shone upon her radiant head and made a glory round it. When the
greater gorse was in flower, and Boodles walked through it hatless,
wearing her green frock, she might have been the spirit of the prickly
shrub; and like it her head was in bloom all the year round.
"Have we got anything for supper, Boodle-oodle?" asked the silly old
male beetle.
"Ees, lots," said the small golden one.
It was not unpleasant to hear Boodles say "ees." She split the word up
and made a kind of anthem out of it. The first sound was very soft, a
mere whisper, and spoken with closed lips. The rest she sang, getting
higher as the final syllable was reached--there were more syllables in
the word than letters--then descending at the drawn-out sibilant, and
finishing in a whisper with closed lips.
"Oh, I forgot," she cried. "No eggs!"
They looked at each other with serious faces. In that simple household
small things were tragedies. There were no eggs. It was a matter for
serious reflection.
"Butter?" queried the old man nervously. "Milk? Cheese? Bread?"
"Heaps, piles, gallons. The kitchen is full of cheese, and you can't
move for bread, and the milk is running over and dripping upon
everything like a milky day," said penitent Boodles. "I have been saying
to myself: 'Eggs, eggs! Yolks, shells, whites--eggs!' I made puns that I
shouldn't forget. I egged myself on. I walked delicately, and said: 'I'm
treading on eggs.' I kept on scolding myself, and saying: 'Teach your
grandmother to suck eggs.' I reminded myself I mustn't put all my eggs
in one basket. Then I went and sat in the window, forgot all about them,
and now I'm a bad egg."
"Boodles, what shall we do?" said the chief beetle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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