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“Well, Granny,” he said, “yu’m a great-granny now.”
The old lady nodded, mumbled her lips a little in a smile, and rubbed one hand on the other. Bowden experienced a shock.
“There ain’t no sense in et all,” he muttered to himself, without knowing too well what he meant.
VIII
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Bowden did not attend when three weeks later the baby was christened Edward Bowden. He spent the June morning in his cart with a bull-calf, taking it to market. The cart did not run well, because the weight of the calf made it jerk and dip. Besides, though used to it all his life, he had never become quite case-hardened to separating calves from their mothers. Bowden had a queer feeling for cattle, more feeling indeed than he had for human beings. He always sat sulky when there was a little red beast tied up and swaying there behind him. Somehow he felt for it, as if in some previous existence he might himself have been a red bull-calf.
Passing through a village someone called:
“’Eard the nus? They beat the Germans up proper yest’day mornin’.”