terms and gaining your own desires? Certainly. I have coaxed,
beaten, prodded, prayed. I have tried leading her past the Shady
Dell turn; she walks all over my feet, and then starts for home, I
running behind until I can catch up with her. I have offered her
one and tenpence the hour; she remained firm. One morning I had a
happy inspiration; I determined on conquering Jane by a subterfuge.
I said to myself: "I am going to start for St. Bridget's Well, as
usual; several yards before we reach the two roads, I shall begin
pulling, not the right, but the left rein. Jane will lift her ears
suddenly, and say to herself: 'What! has this girl fallen in love
with my birthplace at last, and does she now prefer it to St.
Bridget's Well? Then she shall not have it!' Whereupon Jane will
race madly down the right-hand road for the first time, I pulling
steadily at the left rein to keep up appearances, and I shall at
last realise my wishes."

This was my inspiration. Would you believe that it failed utterly?
It should have succeeded, and would with an ordinary donkey, but
Jane saw through it. She obeyed my pull on the left rein, and went
to Shady Dell Farm as usual.

Another of Jane's eccentricities is a violent aversion to
perambulators. As Belvern is a fine, healthy, growing country, with
steadily increasing population, the roads are naturally alive with
perambulators; or at least alive with the babies inside the
perambulators. These are the more alarming to the timid eye in that
many of them are double-barrelled, so to speak, and are loaded to
the muzzle with babies; for not only do Belvern babies frequently
appear as twins, but there are often two youngsters of a
perambulator age in the same family at the same time. To weave that