I often wish that for one brief moment I might remove the lid of Jane's brain and examine her mental processes. She would not exasperate me so deeply if I could be certain of her springs of action. Is she old, is she rheumatic, is she lazy, is she hungry? Sometimes I think she means well, and is only ignorant and dull; but this hypothesis grows less and less tenable as I know her better. Sometimes I conclude that she does not understand me; that the difference in nationality may trouble her. If an Englishman cannot understand an American woman all at once, why should an English donkey? Perhaps it takes an American donkey to comprehend an American woman. Yet I cannot bring myself to drive any other donkey; I am always hoping to impress myself on her imagination, and conquer her will through her fancy. Meanwhile, I like to feel myself in the grasp of a nature stronger than my own, and so I hold to Jane, and buy a photograph of St. Bridget's Well! Chapter XXII. Comfort Cottage. It was about two o'clock in the afternoon, and I suddenly heard a strange sound, that of our fowl cackling. Yesterday I heard her tell-tale note about noon, and the day before just as I was eating my breakfast. I knew that it would be so! The serpent has entered Eden. That fowl has laid before eight in the morning for three weeks without interruption, and she has now entered upon a career of wild and reckless uncertainty which compels me to eat eggs from twelve to twenty-four hours old, just as if I were in London. Alas for the rarity Of regularity Under the sun! A hen, being of the feminine gender, underestimates the majesty of order and system; she resents any approach to the unimaginative monotony of the machine. Probably the Confederated Fowl Union has been meddling with our little paradise where Labour and Capital have dwelt in heavenly unity until now. Nothing can be done about it, of course; even if it were possible to communicate with the fowl, she would say, I suppose, that she would lay when she was ready, and not before; at least, that is what an American hen would say. Just as I was brooding over these mysteries and trying to hatch out some conclusions, Mrs. Bobby knocked at the door, and, coming in, curtsied very low before saying, “It's about namin' the 'ouse, miss.” “Oh yes. Pray don't stand, Mrs. Bobby; take a chair. I am not very busy; I am only painting prickles on my gorse bushes, so we will talk it over.” I shall not attempt to give you Mrs. Bobby's dialect in reporting my various interviews with her, for the spelling of it is quite beyond my powers. Pray remove all the h's wherever they occur, and insert them where they do not; but there will be, over and beyond this, an intonation quite impossible to render.