Ida a Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

pleasantly.
    This was all of Ida’s life just then.
    She said. I do not like birds.
    She liked mechanical birds but not natural birds. Natural birds always sang.
    She sat with her friend and they talked together. Ida said, I am never tired and I am never very fresh. I change all the time. I say to myself, Ida, and that startles me and then I sit still.
    Her friend said, I will come again.
    Do said Ida.
    It was very quiet all day long but Ida was ready for that.
    Ida married Frank Arthur.
    Arthur had been born right in the middle of a big country.
    He knew when he was a tiny boy that the earth was round so it was never a surprise to him. He knew that trees had green leaves and that there was snow when time for snow came and rain when time for rain came. He knew a lot.
    When Arthur was little he knew a handsome boy who had a club-foot and was tall and thin and worked for a farmer.
    The boy with the club-foot rode a bicycle and he would stand and lean on his bicycle and tell Arthur everything.
    He told him all about dogs.
    He told him how a little dog, once he had found out about it, would just go on making love to anything, the hind leg of a big dog, a leg of a table, anything, he told him how a young hunting dog’s voice changed, it cracked just like boys’ voices did and then it went up and down and then finally it settled down. He told him about shepherds’ dogs, how shepherds only could work their dogs eight years that when the dog was nine years old the shepherd had to hang him, that often the shepherd was awfully sad and cried like anything when he had to hang his dog to kill him but he could not keep him after the dog was eight years old, they did not really care anything for sheep after that and how could you feed a dog if he did not care about sheep any more and so the shepherds sometimes cried a lot but when the dog was eight years old they did hang him. Then he told Arthur about another dog and a girl. She always used to give that dog a lump of sugar whenever she saw him. She was a girl in a store where they sold sugar, and then one day she saw the man come in who had the dog, and when he came she said where is the dog and he said the dog is dead. She had the piece of sugar in her hand and when he said that she put the piece of sugar in her mouth and ate it and then she burst out crying. 7
    He told Arthur about sheep, he told him that sheep were curious about everything but mostly about dogs, they always were looking for a dog who looked like a sheep and sometimes they found one and when they did they the young ones the baby sheep were pleased, but the older ones were frightened, as soon as they saw a dog who really looked like a sheep, and they ran at him and tried to butt him.
    He also told Arthur about cows, he said cows were not always willing, he said some cows hated everything. He also told him about bulls. He said bulls were not very interesting.
    He used to stand, the boy with a club-foot, leaning on his bicycle and telling Arthur everything.
    When Arthur was a little bigger he came to know a man, not a tall man. He was a fairly little man and he was a good climber. He could climb not only in and out of a window but out of the top of a door if the door was closed. He was very remarkable. Arthur asked him and he then heard him say that he never thought about anything else than climbing. Why should he when he could climb anything.
    Arthur was not very good at climbing. All he could do was to listen to the little man. He told about how he climbed to the top of a gate, to the top of a door, to the top of a pole. The little man’s name was Bernard. He said it was the same name as that of a saint. Then well naturally then he went away. He finally did go away alone.
    Arthur was almost old enough to go away. Pretty soon he did go away.
    He tried several ways of going away and finally he went away on a boat and got shipwrecked and had his ear frozen.
    He liked that so much that he tried to get shipwrecked again