and they know we'll throw them out if we catch them, yet they persist."
"Perhaps they're cold."
"Not a bit. Feel the depth of that plumage." He plunged his hand into the downy whiteness of her breast. She drew her head back sharply, uttering a strange hissing noise, and staring into his mouth with her wild black eyes.
"She'd like to peck out one of my teeth. Put your hand on her neck."
"She's lovely. Like a graceful, pale woman. She's afraid, poor thing. I'll send her after the others." He dropped her lightly over the half-door, and they watched her as she delicately walked into the dusk, trailing her long feet.
"She's absolutely useless," said Derek. "She should have been eaten for Christmas. She set twice last summer and didn't hatch a poult. But she's so damned decorative—" He closed the door and bolted it, and they turned to go. Their feet scuffled the deep, clean straw; the perches were full of gentle, puffed-out hens, with here and there the toothed comb of a cock rising watchfully. On the lowest perch a row of immaculately white Wyandotte pullets pressed shoulder to plump shoulder. The air, smelling of straw and feathers, was full of comfortable, sleepy twitterings and duckings, sometimes broken by a complaining note as some greedy perch fellow pressed too close against another.
They passed between the dim rows of cows, gently clanking their chains as they stooped for cut hay and chop, and came upon Hugh McKay putting mangolds through the pulping machine. Behind him the blackness of the root cellar yawned like a cave, but his strong body and swinging arms were illuminated by the red glow of a lantern that hung from a rafter above. His shirt was thrown open and the curly hairs on his broad breast glistened in the light.
