MS-WU-MSS008-3-50-2

[3258] have said, Give me your hand. [3259] I said, Take my hand. [3260] Strange. [3261] But the
path was too narrow for us to walk abreast. [3262] So I put my hand behind me and
my son grasped it, gratefully I ^[⁁]fancied. [3263] So we came to the little wicket-gate.
It was locked. [3264] I unlocked it and stood aside, to let my son precede me.
[3265] I turned back to look at my house. [3266] It was partly hidden by the little wood.
The roof's serrated ridge, the single chimney-stack with its four flues,
stood out faintly against the sky spattered with a few dim stars.

[3267] I
offered my face to the black mass of fragrant vegetation that was min^e and
with which I could do as I pleased and never be gainsaid. [3268] It was full of
songbirds, their heads under their wings, fearing nothing, for they knew
me. [3269] My trees, my bushes, my flower-beds, my tiny lawns, I used to think
I loved them.

[3270] If I sometimes cut a branch, a flower, it was solely for
their good, that they might increase in strength and happiness. [3271] And I
never did it without a pang. [3272] Indeed if the truth were known, I did not do
it at all, I got Christ^y to do it. [3273] I grew no vegetables. [3274] Not far off was
the hen-house. [3275] When I said I had turkeys, and so on, I lied. [3276] All I had
was a few hens.

[3277] My grey hen was there, not on the perch with the others,
but on the ground, in a corner, in the dust, at the mercy of the rats. [3278] The
cock no longer sought her out to tread her angrily. [3279] The day was at hand,
if she did not take a turn for the better, when the other hens would join
forces and tear her to pieces, with their beaks and claws. [3280] All was silent.
[3281] I have an extremely sensitive ear.

[3282] Yet I have no ear for music. [3283] I could
just hear that adorable murmur of tiny feet, of quivering feathers and
feeble, smothered clucking that hen-houses make at night and ^{[⁁]that dies} down
long ^[₰] before dawn. [3284] How often I had listened to it, entranced, in the
evening, saying, Tomorrow I am free. [3285] And so I turned again a last time
towards my little all, before I left it, in the hope of keeping it.

[3286] In the lane, having locked the wicket-gate, I said to my son, Left.