The Book of Small
Singing
Small’s singing was joyful noise more than music; what it lacked in elegance it made up in volume. As fire cannot help giving heat so Small’s happiness could not help giving song, in spite of family complaint. They called her singing a “horrible row”, and said it shamed them before the neighbours, but Small sang on. She sang in the cow-yard mostly, not that she went there specially to sing, but she was so happy when she was there among the creatures that the singing did itself. She had but to open her mouth and the noise jumped out.
The moment Small sat down upon the cow-yard woodpile the big rooster would jump into her lap and the cow amble across the yard to plant her squareness, one leg under each corner right in front of Small and, to shut out completely the view of the old red barn, the hen houses, and the manure-pile.
The straight outline of the cow’s back in front of Small was like a range of mountains with low hills and little valleys. The tail end of the cow was as square as a box. Horns were her only curve—back, front, tail, neck and nose in profile, were all straight lines. Even the slobber dripping from her chin fell in slithery streaks.
When Small began to sing the old cow’s nose-line shot from straight down to straight out, her chin rose into the air, her jaws rolled. The harder Small sang, the harder the cow chewed and the faster she twiddled her ears around as if stirring the song into the food to be rechewed in cud along with her breakfast.
Small loved her cow-yard audience—hens twisting their silly heads and clawing the earth with mincing feet, their down eye looking for grubs, their up eye peering at Small, ducks trying hard to out-quack the song, pigeons clapping their white wings, rabbits hoisting and sinking their noses—whether in appreciation or derision Small could never tell.
White fluttered through the cow-yard gate, Bigger’s apron heralding an agitated Bigger, both hands wrestling with the buttons of her apron behind and her tongue ready sharpened to attack Small’s singing.
“It’s disgusting! Stop that vulgar row, Small! What must the neighbours think? Stop it, I say!”
Small sang harder, bellowing the words, “The cow likes it and this is her yard.”
“I wish to goodness that she would roof her yard then, or that you would sing under an umbrella, Small, and so keep the sound down and not let it boil over the fences. There’s the breakfast bell! Throw that fowl out of your lap and come! Song before breakfast means tears before night.”
“Whose tears—mine, the cow’s or the rooster’s?”
“Oh, oh, oh! That cow-brute has dripped slobber down my clean apron!
Breakfast over, the Elder detained Small.
“Small, this singing of yours is scandalous! Yesterday I was walking up the street with a lady. Half a block from our gate she stopped dead. ‘Listen! Someone is in trouble,’ she said. How do you think I felt saying, ‘Oh, no, it is only my little sister singing’?”
Small reddened but said stubbornly, “The cow likes