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+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Diary of a Goose Girl, by Wiggin
+#11 in our series by Kate Douglas Wiggin
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+The Diary of a Goose Girl
+
+by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+August, 1999  [Etext #1867]
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Diary of a Goose Girl, by Wiggin
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+This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+from the 1902 Gay and Bird edition.
+
+
+
+
+
+The Diary of a Goose Girl
+
+by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+
+
+
+THORNYCROFT FARM, near Barbury Green, July 1, 190-.
+
+In alluding to myself as a Goose Girl, I am using only the most
+modest of my titles; for I am also a poultry-maid, a tender of
+Belgian hares and rabbits, and a shepherdess; but I particularly
+fancy the role of Goose Girl, because it recalls the German fairy
+tales of my early youth, when I always yearned, but never hoped, to
+be precisely what I now am.
+
+As I was jolting along these charming Sussex roads the other day, a
+fat buff pony and a tippy cart being my manner of progression, I
+chanced upon the village of Barbury Green.
+
+One glance was enough for any woman, who, having eyes to see, could
+see with them; but I made assurance doubly sure by driving about a
+little, struggling to conceal my new-born passion from the stable-
+boy who was my escort.  Then, it being high noon of a cloudless
+day, I descended from the trap and said to the astonished yokel:
+"You may go back to the Hydropathic; I am spending a month or two
+here.  Wait a moment--I'll send a message, please!"
+
+I then scribbled a word or two to those having me in custody.
+
+"I am very tired of people," the note ran, "and want to rest myself
+by living a while with things.  Address me (if you must) at Barbury
+Green post-office, or at all events send me a box of simple
+clothing there--nothing but shirts and skirts, please.  I cannot
+forget that I am only twenty miles from Oxenbridge (though it might
+be one hundred and twenty, which is the reason I adore it), but I
+rely upon you to keep an honourable distance yourselves, and not to
+divulge my place of retreat to others, especially to--you know
+whom!  Do not pursue me.  I will never be taken alive!"
+
+Having cut, thus, the cable that bound me to civilisation, and
+having seen the buff pony and the dazed yokel disappear in a cloud
+of dust, I looked about me with what Stevenson calls a "fine,
+dizzy, muddle-headed joy," the joy of a successful rebel or a
+liberated serf.  Plenty of money in my purse--that was unromantic,
+of course, but it simplified matters--and nine hours of daylight
+remaining in which to find a lodging.
+
+The village is one of the oldest, and I am sure it must be one of
+the quaintest, in England.  It is too small to be printed on the
+map (an honour that has spoiled more than one Arcadia), so pray do
+not look there, but just believe in it, and some day you may be
+rewarded by driving into it by chance, as I did, and feel the same
+Columbus thrill running, like an electric current, through your
+veins.  I withhold specific geographical information in order that
+you may not miss that Columbus thrill, which comes too seldom in a
+world of railroads.
+
+The Green is in the very centre of Barbury village, and all civic,
+political, family, and social life converges there, just at the
+public duck-pond--a wee, sleepy lake with a slope of grass-covered
+stones by which the ducks descend for their swim.
+
+The houses are set about the Green like those in a toy village.
+They are of old brick, with crumpled, up-and-down roofs of deep-
+toned red, and tufts of stonecrop growing from the eaves.  Diamond-
+paned windows, half open, admit the sweet summer air; and as for
+the gardens in front, it would seem as if the inhabitants had
+nothing to do but work in them, there is such a riotous profusion
+of colour and bloom.  To add to the effect, there are always pots
+of flowers hanging from the trees, blue flax and yellow myrtle; and
+cages of Java sparrows and canaries singing joyously, as well they
+may in such a paradise.
+
+The shops are idyllic, too, as if Nature had seized even the man of
+trade and made him subservient to her designs.  The general
+draper's, where I fitted myself out for a day or two quite easily,
+is set back in a tangle of poppies and sweet peas, Madonna lilies
+and Canterbury bells.  The shop itself has a gay awning, and what
+do you think the draper has suspended from it, just as a
+picturesque suggestion to the passer-by?  Suggestion I call it,
+because I should blush to use the word advertisement in describing
+anything so dainty and decorative.  Well, then, garlands of shoes,
+if you please!  Baby bootlets of bronze; tiny ankle-ties in yellow,
+blue, and scarlet kid; glossy patent-leather pumps shining in the
+sun, with festoons of slippers at the corners, flowery slippers in
+imitation Berlin wool-work.  If you make this picture in your
+mind's-eye, just add a window above the awning, and over the fringe
+of marigolds in the window-box put the draper's wife dancing a
+rosy-cheeked baby.  Alas! my words are only black and white, I
+fear, and this picture needs a palette drenched in primary colours.
+
+Along the street, a short distance, is the old watchmaker's.  Set
+in the hedge at the gate is a glass case with Multum in Parvo
+painted on the woodwork.  Within, a little stand of trinkets
+revolves slowly; as slowly, I imagine, as the current of business
+in that quiet street.  The house stands a trifle back and is
+covered thickly with ivy, while over the entrance-door of the shop
+is a great round clock set in a green frame of clustering vine.
+The hands pointed to one when I passed the watchmaker's garden with
+its thicket of fragrant lavender and its murmuring bees; so I went
+in to the sign of the "Strong i' the Arm" for some cold luncheon,
+determining to patronise "The Running Footman" at the very next
+opportunity.  Neither of these inns is starred by Baedeker, and
+this fact adds the last touch of enchantment to the picture.
+
+The landlady at the "Strong i' the Arm" stabbed me in the heart by
+telling me that there were no apartments to let in the village, and
+that she had no private sitting-room in the inn; but she speedily
+healed the wound by saying that I might be accommodated at one of
+the farm-houses in the vicinity.  Did I object to a farm-'ouse?
+Then she could cheerfully recommend the Evan's farm, only 'alf a
+mile away.  She 'ad understood from Miss Phoebe Evan, who sold her
+poultry, that they would take one lady lodger if she didn't wish
+much waiting upon.
+
+In my present mood I was in search of the strenuous life, and eager
+to wait, rather than to be waited upon; so I walked along the edge
+of the Green, wishing that some mentally unbalanced householder
+would take a sudden fancy to me and ask me to come in and lodge
+awhile.  I suppose these families live under their roofs of peach-
+blow tiles, in the midst of their blooming gardens, for a guinea a
+week or thereabouts; yet if they "undertook" me (to use their own
+phrase), the bill for my humble meals and bed would be at least
+double that.  I don't know that I blame them; one should have
+proper compensation for admitting a world-stained lodger into such
+an Eden.
+
+When I was searching for rooms a week ago, I chanced upon a pretty
+cottage where the woman had sometimes let apartments.  She showed
+me the premises and asked me if I would mind taking my meals in her
+own dining-room, where I could be served privately at certain
+hours:  and, since she had but the one sitting-room, would I allow
+her to go on using it occasionally? also, if I had no special
+preference, would I take the second-sized bedroom and leave her in
+possession of the largest one, which permitted her to have the
+baby's crib by her bedside?  She thought I should be quite as
+comfortable, and it was her opinion that in making arrangements
+with lodgers, it was a good plan not to "bryke up the 'ome any more
+than was necessary."
+
+"Bryke up the 'ome!"  That is seemingly the malignant purpose with
+which I entered Barbury Green.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+
+July 4th.
+
+Enter the family of Thornycroft Farm, of which I am already a
+member in good and regular standing.
+
+I introduce Mrs. Heaven first, for she is a self-saturated person
+who would never forgive the insult should she receive any lower
+place.
+
+She welcomed me with the statement:  "We do not take lodgers here,
+nor boarders; no lodgers, nor boarders, but we do occasionally
+admit paying guests, those who look as if they would appreciate the
+quietude of the plyce and be willing as you might say to remunerate
+according."
+
+I did not mind at this particular juncture what I was called, so
+long as the epithet was comparatively unobjectionable, so I am a
+paying guest, therefore, and I expect to pay handsomely for the
+handsome appellation.  Mrs. Heaven is short and fat; she fills her
+dress as a pin-cushion fills its cover; she wears a cap and apron,
+and she is so full of platitudes that she would have burst had I
+not appeared as a providential outlet for them.  Her accent is not
+of the farm, but of the town, and smacks wholly of the marts of
+trade.  She is repetitious, too, as well as platitudinous.  "I 'ope
+if there's anythink you require you will let us know, let us know,"
+she says several times each day; and whenever she enters my
+sitting-room she prefaces her conversation with the remark:  "I
+trust you are finding it quiet here, miss?  It's the quietude of
+the plyce that is its charm, yes, the quietude.  And yet" (she
+dribbles on) "it wears on a body after a while, miss.  I often go
+into Woodmucket to visit one of my sons just for the noise, simply
+for the noise, miss, for nothink else in the world but the noise.
+There's nothink like noise for soothing nerves that is worn
+threadbare with the quietude, miss, or at least that's my
+experience; and yet to a strynger the quietude of the plyce is its
+charm, undoubtedly its chief charm; and that is what our paying
+guests always say, although our charges are somewhat higher than
+other plyces.  If there's anythink you require, miss, I 'ope you'll
+mention it.  There is not a commodious assortment in Barbury Green,
+but we can always send the pony to Woodmucket in case of urgency.
+Our paying guest last summer was a Mrs. Pollock, and she was by way
+of having sudden fancies.  Young and unmarried though you are,
+miss, I think you will tyke my meaning without my speaking plyner?
+Well, at six o'clock of a rainy afternoon, she was seized with an
+unaccountable desire for vegetable marrows, and Mr. 'Eaven put the
+pony in the cart and went to Woodmucket for them, which is a great
+advantage to be so near a town and yet 'ave the quietude."
+
+Mr. Heaven is merged, like Mr. Jellyby, in the more shining
+qualities of his wife.  A line of description is too long for him.
+Indeed, I can think of no single word brief enough, at least in
+English.  The Latin "nil" will do, since no language is rich in
+words of less than three letters.  He is nice, kind, bald, timid,
+thin, and so colourless that he can scarcely be discerned save in a
+strong light.  When Mrs. Heaven goes out into the orchard in search
+of him, I can hardly help calling from my window, "Bear a trifle to
+the right, Mrs. Heaven--now to the left--just in front of you now--
+if you put out your hands you will touch him."
+
+Phoebe, aged seventeen, is the daughter of the house.  She is
+virtuous, industrious, conscientious, and singularly destitute of
+physical charm.  She is more than plain; she looks as if she had
+been planned without any definite purpose in view, made of the
+wrong materials, been badly put together, and never properly
+finished off; but "plain" after all is a relative word.  Many a
+plain girl has been married for her beauty; and now and then a
+beauty, falling under a cold eye, has been thought plain.
+
+Phoebe has her compensations, for she is beloved by, and
+reciprocates the passion of, the Woodmancote carrier, Woodmucket
+being the English manner of pronouncing the place of his abode.  If
+he "carries" as energetically for the great public as he fetches
+for Phoebe, then he must be a rising and a prosperous man.  He
+brings her daily, wild strawberries, cherries, birds' nests,
+peacock feathers, sea-shells, green hazel-nuts, samples of hens'
+food, or bouquets of wilted field flowers tied together tightly and
+held with a large, moist, loving hand.  He has fine curly hair of
+sandy hue, which forms an aureole on his brow, and a reddish beard,
+which makes another inverted aureole to match, round his chin.  One
+cannot look at him, especially when the sun shines through him,
+without thinking how lovely he would be if stuffed and set on
+wheels, with a little string to drag him about.
+
+Phoebe confided to me that she was on the eve of loving the postman
+when the carrier came across her horizon.
+
+"It doesn't do to be too hysty, does it, miss?" she asked me as we
+were weeding the onion bed.  "I was to give the postman his answer
+on the Monday night, and it was on the Monday morning that Mr.
+Gladwish made his first trip here as carrier.  I may say I never
+wyvered from that moment, and no more did he.  When I think how
+near I came to promising the postman it gives me a turn."  (I can
+understand that, for I once met the man I nearly promised years
+before to marry, and we both experienced such a sense of relief at
+being free instead of bound that we came near falling in love for
+sheer joy.)
+
+The last and most important member of the household is the Square
+Baby.  His name is Albert Edward, and he is really five years old
+and no baby at all; but his appearance on this planet was in the
+nature of a complete surprise to all parties concerned, and he is
+spoiled accordingly.  He has a square head and jaw, square
+shoulders, square hands and feet.  He is red and white and solid
+and stolid and slow-witted, as the young of his class commonly are,
+and will make a bulwark of the nation in course of time, I should
+think; for England has to produce a few thousand such square babies
+every year for use in the colonies and in the standing army.
+Albert Edward has already a military gait, and when he has acquired
+a habit of obedience at all comparable with his power of command,
+he will be able to take up the white man's burden with
+distinguished success.  Meantime I can never look at him without
+marvelling how the English climate can transmute bacon and eggs,
+tea and the solid household loaf into such radiant roses and lilies
+as bloom upon his cheeks and lips.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+
+July 8th.
+
+Thornycroft is by way of being a small poultry farm.
+
+In reaching it from Barbury Green, you take the first left-hand
+road, go till you drop, and there you are.
+
+It reminds me of my "grandmother's farm at Older."  Did you know
+the song when you were a child? -
+
+
+My grandmother had a very fine farm
+'Way down in the fields of Older.
+With a cluck-cluck here,
+And a cluck-cluck there,
+Here and there a cluck-cluck,
+Cluck-cluck here and there,
+Down in the fields at Older.
+
+
+It goes on for ever by the simple subterfuge of changing a few
+words in each verse.
+
+
+My grandmother had a very fine farm
+'Way down in the fields of Older.
+With a quack-quack here,
+And a quack-quack there,
+Here and there a quack-quack,
+Quack-quack here and there,
+Down in the fields at Older.
+
+
+This is followed by the gobble-gobble, moo-moo, baa-baa, etc., as
+long as the laureate's imagination and the infant's breath hold
+good.  The tune is pretty, and I do not know, or did not, when I
+was young, a more fascinating lyric.
+
+Thornycroft House must have belonged to a country gentleman once
+upon a time, or to more than one; men who built on a bit here and
+there once in a hundred years, until finally we have this
+charmingly irregular and dilapidated whole.  You go up three steps
+into Mrs. Heaven's room, down two into mine, while Phoebe's is up
+in a sort of turret with long, narrow lattices opening into the
+creepers.  There are crooked little stair-cases, passages that
+branch off into other passages and lead nowhere in particular; I
+can't think of a better house in which to play hide and seek on a
+wet day.  In front, what was once, doubtless, a green, is cut up
+into greens; to wit, a vegetable garden, where the onions, turnips,
+and potatoes grow cosily up to the very door-sill; the utilitarian
+aspect of it all being varied by some scarlet-runners and a
+scattering of poppies on either side of the path.
+
+The Belgian hares have their habitation in a corner fifty feet
+distant; one large enclosure for poultry lies just outside the
+sweetbrier hedge; the others, with all the houses and coops, are in
+the meadow at the back, where also our tumbler pigeons are kept.
+
+Phoebe attends to the poultry; it is her department.  Mr. Heaven
+has neither the force nor the finesse required, and the gentle
+reader who thinks these qualities unneeded in so humble a calling
+has only to spend a few days at Thornycroft to be convinced.  Mrs.
+Heaven would be of use, but she is dressing the Square Baby in the
+morning and putting him to bed at night just at the hours when the
+feathered young things are undergoing the same operation.
+
+A Goose Girl, like a poet, is sometimes born, sometimes otherwise.
+I am of the born variety.  No training was necessary; I put my head
+on my pillow as a complicated product of modern civilisation on a
+Tuesday night, and on a Wednesday morning I awoke as a Goose Girl.
+
+My destiny slumbered during the day, but at eight o'clock I heard a
+terrific squawking in the direction of the duck-ponds, and,
+aimlessly drifting in that direction, I came upon Phoebe trying to
+induce ducks and drakes, geese and ganders, to retire for the
+night.  They have to be driven into enclosures behind fences of
+wire netting, fastened into little rat-proof boxes, or shut into
+separate coops, so as to be safe from their natural enemies, the
+rats and foxes; which, obeying, I suppose, the law of supply and
+demand, abound in this neighbourhood.  The old ganders are allowed
+their liberty, being of such age, discretion, sagacity, and
+pugnacity that they can be trusted to fight their own battles.
+
+The intelligence of hens, though modest, is of such an order that
+it prompts them to go to bed at a virtuous hour of their own
+accord; but ducks and geese have to be materially assisted, or I
+believe they would roam till morning.  Never did small boy detest
+and resist being carried off to his nursery as these dullards,
+young and old, detest and resist being driven to theirs.  Whether
+they suffer from insomnia, or nightmare, or whether they simply
+prefer the sweet air of liberty (and death) to the odour of
+captivity and the coop, I have no means of knowing.
+
+Phoebe stood by one of the duck-ponds, a long pole in her hand, and
+a helpless expression in that doughlike countenance of hers, where
+aimless contours and features unite to make a kind of facial blur.
+(What does the carrier see in it?)  The pole was not long enough to
+reach the ducks, and Phoebe's method lacked spirit and adroitness,
+so that it was natural, perhaps, that they refused to leave the
+water, the evening being warm, with an uncommon fine sunset.
+
+I saw the situation at once and ran to meet it with a glow of
+interest and anticipation.  If there is anything in the world I
+enjoy, it is making somebody do something that he doesn't want to
+do; and if, when victory perches upon my banner, the somebody can
+be brought to say that he ought to have done it without my making
+him, that adds the unforgettable touch to pleasure, though seldom,
+alas! does it happen.  Then ensued the delightful and stimulating
+hour that has now become a feature of the day; an hour in which the
+remembrance of the table-d'hote dinner at the Hydro, going on at
+identically the same time, only stirs me to a keener joy and
+gratitude.
+
+The ducks swim round in circles, hide under the willows, and
+attempt to creep into the rat-holes in the banks, a stupidity so
+crass that it merits instant death, which it somehow always
+escapes.  Then they come out in couples and waddle under the wrong
+fence into the lower meadow, fly madly under the tool-house, pitch
+blindly in with the sitting hens, and out again in short order, all
+the time quacking and squawking, honking and hissing like a
+bewildered orchestra.  By dint of splashing the water with poles,
+throwing pebbles, beating the shrubs at the pond's edges, "shooing"
+frantically with our skirts, crawling beneath bars to head them
+off, and prodding them from under bushes to urge them on, we
+finally get the older ones out of the water and the younger ones
+into some sort of relation to their various retreats; but, owing to
+their lack of geography, hatred of home, and general recalcitrancy,
+they none of them turn up in the right place and have to be sorted
+out.  We uncover the top of the little house, or the enclosure as
+it may be, or reach in at the door, and, seizing the struggling
+victim, drag him forth and take him where he should have had the
+wit to go in the first instance.  The weak ones get in with the
+strong and are in danger of being trampled; two May goslings that
+look almost full-grown have run into a house with a brood of
+ducklings a week old.  There are twenty-seven crowded into one
+coop, five in another, nineteen in another; the gosling with one
+leg has to come out, and the duckling threatened with the gapes;
+their place is with the "invaleeds," as Phoebe calls them, but they
+never learn the location of the hospital, nor have the slightest
+scruple about spreading contagious diseases.
+
+Finally, when we have separated and sorted exhaustively, an
+operation in which Phoebe shows a delicacy of discrimination and a
+fearlessness of attack amounting to genius, we count the entire
+number and find several missing.  Searching for their animate or
+inanimate bodies, we "scoop" one from under the tool-house, chance
+upon two more who are being harried and pecked by the big geese in
+the lower meadow, and discover one sailing by himself in solitary
+splendour in the middle of the deserted pond, a look of evil
+triumph in his bead-like eye.  Still we lack one young duckling,
+and he at length is found dead by the hedge.  A rat has evidently
+seized him and choked him at a single throttle, but in such haste
+that he has not had time to carry away the tiny body.
+
+"Poor think!" says Phoebe tearfully; "it looks as if it was 'it
+with some kind of a wepping.  I don't know whatever to do with the
+rats, they're gettin' that fearocious!"
+
+Before I was admitted into daily contact with the living goose (my
+previous intercourse with him having been carried on when gravy and
+stuffing obscured his true personality), I thought him a very
+Dreyfus among fowls, a sorely slandered bird, to whom justice had
+never been done; for even the gentle Darwin is hard upon him.  My
+opinion is undergoing some slight modifications, but I withhold
+judgment at present, hoping that some of the follies, faults,
+vagaries, and limitations that I observe in Phoebe's geese may be
+due to Phoebe's educational methods, which were, before my advent,
+those of the darkest ages.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+
+July 9th.
+
+By the time the ducks and geese are incarcerated for the night, the
+reasonable, sensible, practical-minded hens--especially those whose
+mentality is increased and whose virtue is heightened by the
+responsibilities of motherhood--have gone into their own particular
+rat-proof boxes, where they are waiting in a semi-somnolent state
+to have the wire doors closed, the bricks set against them, and the
+bits of sacking flung over the tops to keep out the draught.  We
+have a great many young families, both ducklings and chicks, but we
+have no duck mothers at present.  The variety of bird which Phoebe
+seems to have bred during the past year may be called the New Duck,
+with certain radical ideas about woman's sphere.  What will happen
+to Thornycroft if we develop a New Hen and a New Cow, my
+imagination fails to conceive.  There does not seem to be the
+slightest danger for the moment, however, and our hens lay and sit
+and sit and lay as if laying and sitting were the twin purposes of
+life.
+
+The nature of the hen seems to broaden with the duties of
+maternity, but I think myself that we presume a little upon her
+amiability and natural motherliness.  It is one thing to desire a
+family of one's own, to lay eggs with that idea in view, to sit
+upon them three long weeks and hatch out and bring up a nice brood
+of chicks.  It must be quite another to have one's eggs abstracted
+day by day and eaten by a callous public, the nest filled with
+deceitful substitutes, and at the end of a dull and weary period of
+hatching to bring into the world another person's children--
+children, too, of the wrong size, the wrong kind of bills and feet,
+and, still more subtle grievance, the wrong kind of instincts,
+leading them to a dangerous aquatic career, one which the mother
+may not enter to guide, guard, and teach; one on the brink of which
+she must ever stand, uttering dryshod warnings which are never
+heeded.  They grow used to this strange order of things after a
+bit, it is true, and are less anxious and excited.  When the duck-
+brood returns safely again and again from what the hen-mother
+thinks will prove a watery grave, she becomes accustomed to the
+situation, I suppose.  I find that at night she stands by the pond
+for what she considers a decent, self-respecting length of time,
+calling the ducklings out of the water; then, if they refuse to
+come, the mother goes off to bed and leaves them to Providence, or
+Phoebe.
+
+The brown hen that we have named Cornelia is the best mother, the
+one who waits longest and most patiently for the web-footed Gracchi
+to finish their swim.
+
+When a chick is taken out of the incubytor (as Phoebe calls it) and
+refused by all the other hens, Cornelia generally accepts it,
+though she had twelve of her own when we began using her as an
+orphan asylum.  "Wings are made to stretch," she seems to say
+cheerfully, and with a kind glance of her round eye she welcomes
+the wanderer and the outcast.  She even tended for a time the
+offspring of an absent-minded, light-headed pheasant who flew over
+a four-foot wall and left her young behind her to starve; it was
+not a New Pheasant, either; for the most conservative and old-
+fashioned of her tribe occasionally commits domestic solecisms of
+this sort.
+
+There is no telling when, where, or how the maternal instinct will
+assert itself.  Among our Thornycroft cats is a certain Mrs.
+Greyskin.  She had not been seen for many days, and Mrs. Heaven
+concluded that she had hidden herself somewhere with a family of
+kittens; but as the supply of that article with us more than equals
+the demand, we had not searched for her with especial zeal.
+
+The other day Mrs. Greyskin appeared at the dairy door, and when
+she had been fed Phoebe and I followed her stealthily, from a
+distance.  She walked slowly about as if her mind were quite free
+from harassing care, and finally approached a deserted cow-house
+where there was a great mound of straw.  At this moment she caught
+sight of us and turned in another direction to throw us off the
+scent.  We persevered in our intention of going into her probable
+retreat, and were cautiously looking for some sign of life in the
+haymow, when we heard a soft cackle and a ruffling of plumage.
+Coming closer to the sound we saw a black hen brooding a nest, her
+bright bead eyes turning nervously from side to side; and, coaxed
+out from her protecting wings by youthful curiosity, came four
+kittens, eyes wide open, warm, happy, ready for sport!
+
+The sight was irresistible, and Phoebe ran for Mr. and Mrs. Heaven
+and the Square Baby.  Mother Hen was not to be embarrassed or
+daunted, even if her most sacred feelings were regarded in the
+light of a cheap entertainment.  She held her ground while one of
+the kits slid up and down her glossy back, and two others, more
+timid, crept underneath her breast, only daring to put out their
+pink noses!  We retired then for very shame and met Mrs. Greyskin
+in the doorway.  This should have thickened the plot, but there is
+apparently no rivalry nor animosity between the co-mothers.  We
+watch them every day now, through a window in the roof.  Mother
+Greyskin visits the kittens frequently, lies down beside the home
+nest, and gives them their dinner.  While this is going on Mother
+Blackwing goes modestly away for a bite, a sup, and a little
+exercise, returning to the kittens when the cat leaves them.  It is
+pretty to see her settle down over the four, fat, furry dumplings,
+and they seem to know no difference in warmth or comfort, whichever
+mother is brooding them; while, as their eyes have been open for a
+week, it can no longer be called a blind error on their part.
+
+When we have closed all our small hen-nurseries for the night,
+there is still the large house inhabited by the thirty-two full-
+grown chickens which Phoebe calls the broilers.  I cannot endure
+the term, and will not use it.  "Now for the April chicks," I say
+every evening.
+
+"Do you mean the broilers?" asks Phoebe.
+
+"I mean the big April chicks," say I.
+
+"Yes, them are the broilers," says she.
+
+But is it not disagreeable enough to be a broiler when one's time
+comes, without having the gridiron waved in one's face for weeks
+beforehand?
+
+The April chicks are all lively and desirous of seeing the world as
+thoroughly as possible before going to roost or broil.  As a
+general thing, we find in the large house sixteen young fowls of
+the contemplative, flavourless, resigned-to-the-inevitable variety;
+three more (the same three every night) perch on the roof and are
+driven down; four (always the same four) cling to the edge of the
+open door, waiting to fly off, but not in, when you attempt to
+close it; nine huddle together on a place in the grass about forty
+feet distant, where a small coop formerly stood in the prehistoric
+ages.  This small coop was one in which they lodged for a fortnight
+when they were younger, and when those absolutely indelible
+impressions are formed of which we read in educational maxims.  It
+was taken away long since, but the nine loyal (or stupid)
+Casabiancas cling to the sacred spot where its foundations rested;
+they accordingly have to be caught and deposited bodily in the
+house, and this requires strategy, as they note our approach from a
+considerable distance.
+
+Finally all are housed but two, the little white cock and the black
+pullet, who are still impish and of a wandering mind.  Though
+headed off in every direction, they fly into the hedges and hide in
+the underbrush.  We beat the hedge on the other side, but with no
+avail.  We dive into the thicket of wild roses, sweetbrier, and
+thistles on our hands and knees, coming out with tangled hair,
+scratched noses, and no hens.  Then, when all has been done that
+human ingenuity can suggest, Phoebe goes to her late supper and I
+do sentry-work.  I stroll to a safe distance, and, sitting on one
+of the rat-proof boxes, watch the bushes with an eagle eye.  Five
+minutes go by, ten, fifteen; and then out steps the white cock,
+stealthily tiptoeing toward the home into which he refused to go at
+our instigation.  In a moment out creeps the obstinate little beast
+of a black pullet from the opposite clump.  The wayward pair meet
+at their own door, which I have left open a few inches.  When all
+is still I walk gently down the field, and, warned by previous
+experiences, approach the house from behind.  I draw the door to
+softly and quickly; but not so quickly that the evil-minded and
+suspicious black pullet hasn't time to spring out, with a make-
+believe squawk of fright--that induces three other blameless
+chickens to fly down from their perches and set the whole flock in
+a flutter.  Then I fall from grace and call her a Broiler; and
+when, after some minutes of hot pursuit, I catch her by falling
+over her in the corner by the goose-pen, I address her as a fat,
+juicy Broiler with parsley butter and a bit of bacon.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+
+July 10th.
+
+At ten thirty or so in the morning the cackling begins.  I wonder
+exactly what it means!  Have the forest-lovers who listen so
+respectfully to, and interpret so exquisitely, the notes of birds--
+have none of them made psychological investigations of the hen
+cackle?  Can it be simple elation?  One could believe that of the
+first few eggs, but a hen who has laid two or three hundred can
+hardly feel the same exuberant pride and joy daily.  Can it be the
+excitement incident to successful achievement?  Hardly, because the
+task is so extremely simple.  Eggs are more or less alike; a little
+larger or smaller, a trifle whiter or browner; and almost sure to
+be quite right as to details; that is, the big end never gets
+confused with the little end, they are always ovoid and never
+spherical, and the yolk is always inside of the white.  As for a
+soft-shelled egg, it is so rare an occurrence that the fear of
+laying one could not set the whole race of hens in a panic; so
+there really cannot be any intellectual or emotional agitation in
+producing a thing that might be made by a machine.  Can it be
+simply "fussiness"; since the people who have the least to do
+commonly make the most flutter about doing it?
+
+Perhaps it is merely conversation.  "Cut-cut-cut-cut-cut-DAHcut! .
+. . I have finished my strictly fresh egg, have you laid yours?
+Make haste, then, for the cock has found a gap in the wire-fence
+and wants us to wander in the strawberry-bed. . . . Cut-cut-cut-
+cut-cut-DAHcut . . . Every moment is precious, for the Goose Girl
+will find us, when she gathers the strawberries for her luncheon .
+. . Cut-cut-cut-cut!  On the way out we can find sweet places to
+steal nests . . . Cut-cut-cut! . . . I am so glad I am not sitting
+this heavenly morning; it IS a dull life.
+
+A Lancashire poultry-man drifted into Barbury Green yesterday.  He
+is an old acquaintance of Mr. Heaven, and spent the night and part
+of the next day at Thornycroft Farm.  He possessed a deal of fowl
+philosophy, and tells many a good hen story, which, like fish
+stories, draw rather largely on the credulity of the audience.  We
+were sitting in the rickyard talking comfortably about laying and
+cackling and kindred matters when he took his pipe from his mouth
+and told us the following tale--not a bad one if you can translate
+the dialect:-
+
+'Aw were once towd as, if yo' could only get th' hen's egg away
+afooar she hed sin it, th' hen 'ud think it hed med a mistek an'
+sit deawn ageean an' lay another.
+
+'An' it seemed to me it were a varra sensible way o' lukkin' at it.
+Sooa aw set to wark to mek a nest as 'ud tek a rise eawt o' th'
+hens.  An' aw dud it too.  Aw med a nest wi' a fause bottom, th'
+idea bein' as when a hen hed laid, th' egg 'ud drop through into a
+box underneyth.
+
+'Aw felt varra preawd o' that nest, too, aw con tell yo', an' aw
+remember aw felt quite excited when aw see an awd black Minorca,
+th' best layer as aw hed, gooa an' settle hersel deawn i' th' nest
+an' get ready for wark.  Th' hen seemed quite comfortable enough,
+aw were glad to see, an' geet through th' operation beawt ony
+seemin' trouble.
+
+"Well, aw darsay yo' know heaw a hen carries on as soon as it's
+laid a egg.  It starts "chuckin'" away like a showman's racket, an'
+after tekkin' a good Ink at th' egg to see whether it's a big 'un
+or a little 'un, gooas eawt an' tells all t'other hens abeawt it.
+
+"Neaw, this black Minorca, as aw sed, were a owdish bird, an' maybe
+knew mooar than aw thowt.  Happen it hed laid on a nest wi' a fause
+bottom afooar, an' were up to th' trick, but whether or not, aw
+never see a hen luk mooar disgusted i' mi life when it lukked i'
+th' nest an' see as it hed hed all that trouble fer nowt.
+
+"It woked reawnd th' nest as if it couldn't believe its own eyes.
+
+"But it dudn't do as aw expected.  Aw expected as it 'ud sit deawn
+ageean an' lay another.
+
+"But it just gi'e one wonderin' sooart o' chuck, an then, after a
+long stare reawnd th' hen-coyt, it woked eawt, as mad a hen as
+aw've ever sin.  Aw fun' eawt after, what th' long stare meant.  It
+were tekkin' farewell!  For if yo'll believe me that hen never laid
+another egg i' ony o' my nests.
+
+"Varra like it laid away in a spot wheear it could hev summat to
+luk at when it hed done wark for th' day.
+
+"Sooa aw lost mi best layer through mi actin', an' aw've never
+invented owt sen."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+
+One learns to be modest by living on a poultry farm, for there are
+constant expositions of the most deplorable vanity among the cocks.
+We have a couple of pea-fowl who certainly are an addition to the
+landscape, as they step mincingly along the square of turf we
+dignify by the name of lawn.  The head of the house has a most
+languid and self-conscious strut, and his microscopic mind is fixed
+entirely on his splendid trailing tail.  If I could only master his
+language sufficiently to tell him how hideously ugly the back view
+of this gorgeous fan is, when he spreads it for the edification of
+the observer in front of him, he would of course retort that there
+is a "congregation side" to everything, but I should at least force
+him into a defence of his tail and a confession of its limitations.
+This would be new and unpleasant, I fancy; and if it produced no
+perceptible effect upon his super-arrogant demeanour, I might
+remind him that he is likely to be used, eventually, for a feather
+duster, unless, indeed, the Heavens are superstitious and prefer to
+throw his tail away, rather than bring ill luck and the evil eye
+into the house.
+
+The longer I study the cock, whether Black Spanish, White Leghorn,
+Dorking, or the common barnyard fowl, the more intimately I am
+acquainted with him, the less I am impressed with his character.
+He has more pride of bearing, and less to be proud of, than any
+bird I know.  He is indolent, though he struts pompously over the
+grass as if the day were all too short for his onerous duties.  He
+calls the hens about him when I throw corn from the basket, but
+many a time I have seen him swallow hurriedly, and in private, some
+dainty titbit he has found unexpectedly.  He has no particular
+chivalry.  He gives no special encouragement to his hen when he
+becomes a prospective father, and renders little assistance when
+the responsibilities become actualities.  His only personal message
+or contribution to the world is his raucous cock-a-doodle-doo,
+which, being uttered most frequently at dawn, is the most ill-timed
+and offensive of all musical notes.  It is so unnecessary too, as
+if the day didn't come soon enough without his warning; but I
+suppose he is anxious to waken his hens and get them at their daily
+task, and so he disturbs the entire community.  In short, I dislike
+him; his swagger, his autocratic strut, his greed, his irritating
+self-consciousness, his endless parading of himself up and down in
+a procession of one.
+
+Of course his character is largely the result of polygamy.  His
+weaknesses are only what might be expected; and as for the hens, I
+have considerable respect for the patience, sobriety, and dignity
+with which they endure an institution particularly offensive to all
+women.  In their case they do not even have the sustaining thought
+of its being an article of religion, so they are to be complimented
+the more.
+
+There is nothing on earth so feminine as a hen--not womanly, simply
+feminine.  Those men of insight who write the Woman's Page in the
+Sunday newspapers study hens more than women, I sometimes think; at
+any rate, their favourite types are all present on this poultry
+farm.
+
+Some families of White Leghorns spend most of their time in the
+rickyard, where they look extremely pretty, their slender white
+shapes and red combs and wattles well set off by the background of
+golden hayricks.  There is a great oak-tree in one corner, with a
+tall ladder leaning against its trunk, and a capital roosting-place
+on a long branch running at right angles with the ladder.  I try to
+spend a quarter of an hour there every night before supper, just
+for the pleasure of seeing the feathered "women-folks" mount that
+ladder.
+
+A dozen of them surround the foot, waiting restlessly for their
+turn.  One little white lady flutters up on the lowest round and
+perches there until she reviews the past, faces the present, and
+forecasts the future; during which time she is gathering courage
+for the next jump.  She cackles, takes up one foot and then the
+other, tilts back and forth, holds up her skirts and drops them
+again, cocks her head nervously to see whether they are all staring
+at her below, gives half a dozen preliminary springs which mean
+nothing, declares she can't and won't go up any faster, unties her
+bonnet strings and pushes back her hair, pulls down her dress to
+cover her toes, and finally alights on the next round, swaying to
+and fro until she gains her equilibrium, when she proceeds to enact
+the same scene over again.
+
+All this time the hens at the foot of the ladder are criticising
+her methods and exclaiming at the length of time she requires in
+mounting; while the cocks stroll about the yard keeping one eye on
+the ladder, picking up a seed here and there, and giving a
+masculine sneer now and then at the too-familiar scene.  They
+approach the party at intervals, but only to remark that it always
+makes a man laugh to see a woman go up a ladder.  The next hen,
+stirred to the depths by this speech, flies up entirely too fast,
+loses her head, tumbles off the top round, and has to make the
+ascent over again.  Thus it goes on and on, this petite comedie
+humaine, and I could enjoy it with my whole heart if Mr. Heaven did
+not insist on sharing the spectacle with me.  He is so
+inexpressibly dull, so destitute of humour, that I did not think it
+likely he would see in the performance anything more than a flock
+of hens going up a ladder to roost.  But he did; for there is no
+man so blind that he cannot see the follies of women; and, when he
+forgot himself so far as to utter a few genial, silly, well-worn
+reflections upon femininity at large, I turned upon him and
+revealed to him some of the characteristics of his own sex, gained
+from an exhaustive study of the barnyard fowl of the masculine
+gender.  He went into the house discomfited, though chuckling a
+little at my vehemence; but at least I have made it for ever
+impossible for him to watch his hens without an occasional glance
+at the cocks.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+
+July 12th.
+
+O the pathos of a poultry farm!  Catherine of Aragon, the black
+Spanish hen that stole her nest, brought out nine chicks this
+morning, and the business-like and marble-hearted Phoebe has taken
+them away and given them to another hen who has only seven.  Two
+mothers cannot be wasted on these small families--it would not be
+profitable; and the older mother, having been tried and found
+faithful over seven, has been given the other nine and accepted
+them.  What of the bereft one?  She is miserable and stands about
+moping and forlorn, but it is no use fighting against the
+inevitable; hens' hearts must obey the same laws that govern the
+rotation of crops.  Catherine of Aragon feels her lot a bitter one
+just now, but in time she will succumb, and lay, which is more to
+the point.
+
+We have had a very busy evening, beginning with the rats' supper--
+delicate sandwiches of bread-and-butter spread with Paris green.
+
+We have a new brood of seventeen ducklings just hatched this
+afternoon.  When we came to the nest the yellow and brown bunches
+of down and fluff were peeping out from under the hen's wings in
+the prettiest fashion in the world.
+
+"It's a noble hen!" I said to Phoebe.
+
+"She ain't so nowble as she looks," Phoebe answered grimly.  "It
+was another 'en that brooded these eggs for near on three weeks and
+then this big one come along with a fancy she'd like a family
+'erself if she could steal one without too much trouble; so she
+drove the rightful 'en off the nest, finished up the last few days,
+and 'ere she is in possession of the ducklings!"
+
+"Why don't you take them away from her and give them back to the
+first hen, who did most of the work?" I asked, with some spirit.
+
+"Like as not she wouldn't tyke them now," said Phoebe, as she
+lifted the hen off the broken egg-shells and moved her gently into
+a clean box, on a bed of fresh hay.  We put food and drink within
+reach of the family, and very proud and handsome that highway
+robber of a hen looked, as she stretched her wings over the
+seventeen easily-earned ducklings.
+
+Going back to the old nesting-box, I found one egg forgotten among
+the shells.  It was still warm, and I took it up to run across the
+field with it to Phoebe.  It was heavy, and the carrying of it was
+a queer sensation, inasmuch as it squirmed and "yipped"
+vociferously in transit, threatening so unmistakably to hatch in my
+hand that I was decidedly nervous.  The intrepid little youngster
+burst his shell as he touched Phoebe's apron, and has become the
+strongest and handsomest of the brood.
+
+All this tending of downy young things, this feeding and putting to
+bed, this petting and nursing and rearing, is such pretty,
+comforting woman's work.  I am sure Phoebe will make a better wife
+to the carrier for having been a poultry-maid, and though good
+enough for most practical purposes when I came here, I am an
+infinitely better woman now.  I am afraid I was not particularly
+nice the last few days at the Hydro.  Such a lot of dull, prosy,
+inquisitive, bothering old tabbies!  Aunt Margaret furnishing
+imaginary symptoms enough to keep a fond husband and two trained
+nurses distracted; a man I had never encouraged in my life coming
+to stay in the neighbourhood and turning up daily for rejection;
+another man taking rooms at the very hotel with the avowed purpose
+of making my life a burden; and on the heels of both, a widow of
+thirty-five in full chase!  Small wonder I thought it more
+dignified to retire than to compete, and so I did.
+
+I need not, however, have cut the threads that bound me to
+Oxenbridge with such particularly sharp scissors, nor given them
+such a vicious snap; for, so far as I can observe, the little world
+of which I imagined myself the sun continues to revolve, and,
+probably, about some other centre.  I can well imagine who has
+taken up that delightful but somewhat exposed and responsible
+position--it would be just like her!
+
+I am perfectly happy where I am; it is not that; but it seems so
+strange that they can be perfectly happy without me, after all that
+they--after all that was said on the subject not many days ago.
+Nothing turns out as one expects.  There have been no hot pursuits,
+no rewards offered, no bills posted, no printed placards issued
+describing the beauty and charms of a young person who supposed
+herself the cynosure of every eye.  Heigh-ho!  What does it matter,
+after all?  One can always be a Goose Girl!
+
+* * *
+
+I wonder if the hen mother is quite, quite satisfied with her
+ducklings!  Do you suppose the fact of hatching and brooding them
+breaks down all the sense of difference?  Does she not sometimes
+reflect that if her children were the ordinary sort, and not these
+changelings, she would be enjoying certain pretty little attentions
+dear to a mother's heart?  The chicks would be pecking the food off
+her broad beak with their tiny ones, and jumping on her back to
+slide down her glossy feathers.  They would be far nicer to cuddle,
+too, so small and graceful and light; the changelings are a trifle
+solid and brawny.  And personally, just as a matter of taste, would
+she not prefer wee, round, glancing heads, and pointed beaks,
+peeping from under her wings, to these teaspoon-shaped things
+larger than her own?  I wonder!
+
+We are training fourteen large young chickens to sit on the perches
+in their new house, instead of huddling together on the floor as
+has been their habit, because we discover rat-holes under the wire
+flooring occasionally, and fear that toes may be bitten.  At nine
+o'clock Phoebe and I lift the chickens one by one, and, as it were,
+glue them to their perches, squawking.  Three nights have we gone
+patiently through with this performance, but they have not learned
+the lesson.  The ducks and geese are, however, greatly improved by
+the application of advanced educational methods, and the regime of
+perfect order and system instituted by Me begins to show results.
+
+There is no more violent splashing and pebbling, racing, chasing,
+separating.  The pole, indeed, still has to be produced, but at the
+first majestic wave of my hand they scuttle toward the shore.  The
+geese turn to the right, cross the rickyard, and go to their pen;
+the May ducks turn to the left for their coops, the June ducks
+follow the hens to the top meadow, and even the idiot gosling has
+an inspiration now and then and stumbles on his own habitation.
+
+Mrs. Heaven has no reverence for the principles of Comenius,
+Pestalozzi, or Herbert Spencer as applied to poultry, and when the
+ducks and geese came out of the pond badly the other night and went
+waddling and tumbling and hissing all over creation, did not
+approve of my sending them back into the pond to start afresh.
+
+"I consider it a great waste of time, of good time, miss," she
+said; "and, after all, do you consider that educated poultry will
+be any better eating, or that it will lay more than one egg a day,
+miss?"
+
+I have given the matter some attention, and I fear Mrs. Heaven is
+right.  A duck, a goose, or a hen in which I have developed a
+larger brain, implanted a sense of duty, or instilled an idea of
+self-government, is likely, on the whole, to be leaner, not fatter.
+There is nothing like obeying the voice of conscience for taking
+the flesh off one's bones; and, speaking of conscience, Phoebe,
+whose metaphysics are of the farm farmy, says that hers "felt like
+a hunlaid hegg for dyes" after she had jilted the postman.
+
+As to the eggs, I am sure the birds will go on laying one a day for
+'tis their nature to.  Whether the product of the intelligent,
+conscious, logical fowl, will be as rich in quality as that of the
+uneducated and barbaric bird, I cannot say; but it ought at least
+to be equal to the Denmark egg eaten now by all Londoners; and if,
+perchance, left uneaten, it is certain to be a very superior wife
+and mother.
+
+While we are discussing the subject of educating poultry, I confess
+that the case of Cannibal Ann gives me much anxiety.  Twice in her
+short career has she been under suspicion of eating her own eggs,
+but Phoebe has never succeeded in catching her in flagrante
+delicto.  That eminent detective service was reserved for me, and I
+have been haunted by the picture ever since.  It is an awful sight
+to witness a hen gulp her own newly-laid fresh egg, yolk, white,
+shell, and all; to realise that you have fed, sheltered, chased,
+and occasionally run in, a being possessed of no moral sense, a
+being likely to set a bad example, inculcate vicious habits among
+her innocent sisters, and lower the standard of an entire poultry-
+yard.  The Young Poultry Keeper's Friend gives us no advice on this
+topic, and we do not know whether to treat Cannibal Ann as the
+victim of a disease, or as a confirmed criminal; whether to
+administer remedies or cut her off in the flower of her youth.
+
+We have had a sad scene to-night.  A chick has been ailing all day,
+and when we shut up the brood we found him dead in a corner.
+
+Phoebe put him on the ground while she busied herself about the
+coop.  The other chicks came out and walked about the dead one
+again and again, eyeing him curiously.
+
+"Poor little chap!" said Phoebe.  "E's never 'ad a mother!  'E was
+an incubytor chicken, and wherever I took 'im 'e was picked at.
+There was somethink wrong with 'im; 'e never was a fyvorite!"
+
+I put the fluffy body into a hole in the turf, and strewed a
+handful of grass over him.  "Sad little epitaph!" I thought.  "He
+never was a fyvorite!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+
+July 13th.
+
+I like to watch the Belgian hares eating their trifolium or pea-
+pods or grass; graceful, gentle things they are, crowding about Mr.
+Heaven, and standing prettily, not greedily, on their hind legs, to
+reach for the clover, their delicate nostrils and whiskers all a-
+quiver with excitement.
+
+As I look out of my window in the dusk I can see one of the mothers
+galloping across the enclosure, the soft white lining of her tail
+acting as a beacon-light to the eight infant hares following her, a
+quaint procession of eight white spots in it glancing line.  In the
+darkest night those baby creatures could follow their mother
+through grass or hedge or thicket, and she would need no warning
+note to show them where to flee in case of danger.  "All you have
+to do is to follow the white night-light that I keep in the lining
+of my tail," she says, when she is giving her first maternal
+lectures; and it seems a beneficent provision of Nature.  To be
+sure, Mr. Heaven took his gun and went out to shoot wild rabbits
+to-day, and I noted that he marked them by those same self-
+betraying tails, as they scuttled toward their holes or leaped
+toward the protecting cover of the hedge; so it does not appear
+whether Nature is on the side of the farmer or the rabbit . . .
+
+There is as much comedy and as much tragedy in poultry life as
+anywhere, and already I see rifts within lutes.  We have in a cage
+a French gentleman partridge married to a Hungarian lady of
+defective sight.  He paces back and forth in the pen restlessly,
+anything but content with the domestic fireside.  One can see
+plainly that he is devoted to the Boulevards, and that if left to
+his own inclinations he would never have chosen any spouse but a
+thorough Parisienne.
+
+The Hungarian lady is blind of one eye, from some stray shot, I
+suppose.  She is melancholy at all times, and occasionally goes so
+far as to beat her head against the wire netting.  If liberated,
+Mr. Heaven says that her blindness would only expose her to death
+at the hands of the first sportsman, and it always seems to me as
+if she knows this, and is ever trying to decide whether a loveless
+marriage is any better than the tomb.
+
+Then, again, the great, grey gander is, for some mysterious reason,
+out of favour with the entire family.  He is a noble and amiable
+bird, by far the best all-round character in the flock, for dignity
+of mien and large-minded common-sense.  What is the treatment
+vouchsafed to this blameless husband and father?  One that puts
+anybody out of sorts with virtue and its scant rewards.  To begin
+with, the others will not allow him to go into the pond.  There is
+an organised cabal against it, and he sits solitary on the bank,
+calm and resigned, but, naturally, a trifle hurt.  His favourite
+retreat is a tiny sort of island on the edge of the pool under the
+alders, where with his bent head, and red-rimmed philosophic eyes
+he regards his own breast and dreams of happier days.  When the
+others walk into the country twenty-three of them keep together,
+and Burd Alane (as I have named him from the old ballad) walks by
+himself.  The lack of harmony is so evident here, and the slight so
+intentional and direct, that it almost moves me to tears.  The
+others walk soberly, always in couples, but even Burd Alane's
+rightful spouse is on the side of the majority, and avoids her
+consort.
+
+What is the nature of his offence?  There can be no connubial
+jealousies, I judge, as geese are strictly monogamous, and having
+chosen a partner of their joys and sorrows they cleave to each
+other until death or some other inexorable circumstance does them
+part.  If they are ever mistaken in their choice, and think they
+might have done better, the world is none the wiser.  Burd Alane
+looks in good condition, but Phoebe thinks he is not quite himself,
+and that some day when he is in greater strength he will turn on
+his foes and rend them, regaining thus his lost prestige, for
+formerly he was king of the flock.
+
+* * *
+
+Phoebe has not a vestige of sentiment.  She just asked me if I
+would have a duckling or a gosling for dinner; that there were two
+quite ready--the brown and yellow duckling, that is the last to
+leave the water at night, and the white gosling that never knows
+his own 'ouse.  Which would I 'ave, and would I 'ave it with sage
+and onion?
+
+Now, had I found a duckling on the table at dinner I should have
+eaten it without thinking at all, or with the thought that it had
+come from Barbury Green.  But eat a duckling that I have stoned out
+of the pond, pursued up the bank, chased behind the wire netting,
+caught, screaming, in a corner, and carried struggling to his bed?
+Feed upon an idiot gosling that I have found in nine different
+coops on nine successive nights--in with the newly-hatched chicks,
+the half-grown pullets, the setting hen, the "invaleed goose," the
+drake with the gapes, the old ducks in the pen?--Eat a gosling that
+I have caught and put in with his brothers and sisters (whom he
+never recognises) so frequently and regularly that I am familiar
+with every joint in his body?
+
+In the first place, with my own small bump of locality and lack of
+geography, I would never willingly consume a creature who might, by
+some strange process of assimilation, make me worse in this
+respect; in the second place, I should have to be ravenous indeed
+to sit down deliberately and make a meal of an intimate friend, no
+matter if I had not a high opinion of his intelligence.  I should
+as soon think of eating the Square Baby, stuffed with sage and
+onion and garnished with green apple-sauce, as the yellow duckling
+or the idiot gosling.
+
+Mrs. Heaven has just called me into her sitting-room, ostensibly to
+ask me to order breakfast, but really for the pleasure of
+conversation.  Why she should inquire whether I would relish some
+gammon of bacon with eggs, when she knows that there has not been,
+is not now, and never will be, anything but gammon of bacon with
+eggs, is more than I can explain.
+
+"Would you like to see my flowers, miss?" she asks, folding her
+plump hands over her white apron.  "They are looking beautiful this
+morning.  I am so fond of potted plants, of plants in pots.  Look
+at these geraniums!  Now, I consider that pink one a perfect bloom;
+yes, a perfect bloom.  This is a fine red one, is it not, miss?
+Especially fine, don't you think?  The trouble with the red variety
+is that they're apt to get "bobby" and have to be washed regularly;
+quite bobby they do get indeed, I assure you.  That white one has
+just gone out of blossom, and it was really wonderful.  You could
+'ardly have told it from a paper flower, miss, not from a white
+paper flower.  My plants are my children nowadays, since Albert
+Edward is my only care.  I have been the mother of eleven children,
+miss, all of them living, so far as I know; I know nothing to the
+contrary.  I 'ope you are not wearying of this solitary place,
+miss?  It will grow upon you, I am sure, as it did upon Mrs.
+Pollock, with all her peculiar fancies, and as it 'as grown upon
+us.--We formerly had a butcher's shop in Buffington, and it was
+naturally a great responsibility.  Mr. Heaven's nerves are not
+strong, and at last he wanted a life of more quietude, more
+quietude was what he craved.  The life of a retail butcher is a
+most exciting and wearying one.  Nobody satisfied with their meat;
+as if it mattered in a world of change!  Everybody complaining of
+too much bone or too little fat; nobody wishing tough chops or
+cutlets, but always seeking after fine joints, when it's against
+reason and nature that all joints should be juicy and all cutlets
+tender; always complaining if livers are not sent with every fowl,
+always asking you to remember the trimmin's, always wanting their
+beef well 'ung, and then if you 'ang it a minute too long, it's
+left on your 'ands!  I often used to say to Mr. Heaven, yes many's
+the time I've said it, that if people would think more of the great
+'ereafter and less about their own little stomachs, it would be a
+deal better for them, yes, a deal better, and make it much more
+comfortable for the butchers!"
+
+* * *
+
+Burd Alane has had a good quarter of an hour to-day.
+
+His spouse took a brief promenade with him.  To be sure, it was
+during an absence of the flock on the other side of the hedge so
+that the moral effect of her spasm of wifely loyalty was quite lost
+upon them.  I strongly suspect that she would not have granted
+anything but a secret interview.  What a petty, weak, ignoble
+character!  I really don't like to think so badly of any fellow-
+creature as I am forced to think of that politic, time-serving,
+pusillanimous goose.  I believe she laid the egg that produced the
+idiot gosling!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+
+Here follows the true story of Sir Muscovy Drake, the Lady Blanche,
+and Miss Malardina Crippletoes.
+
+Phoebe's flock consisted at first mostly of Brown Mallards, but a
+friend gave her a sitting of eggs warranted to produce a most
+beautiful variety of white ducks.  They were hatched in due time,
+but proved hard to raise, till at length there was only one
+survivor, of such uncommon grace and beauty that we called her the
+Lady Blanche.  Presently a neighbour sold Phoebe his favourite
+Muscovy drake, and these two splendid creatures by "natural
+selection" disdained to notice the rest of the flock, but forming a
+close friendship, wandered in the pleasant paths of duckdom
+together, swimming and eating quite apart from the others.
+
+In the brown flock there was one unfortunate, misshapen from the
+egg, quite lame, and with no smoothness of plumage; but on that
+very account, apparently, or because she was too weak to resist
+them, the others treated her cruelly, biting her and pushing her
+away from the food.
+
+One day it happened that the two ducks--Sir Muscovy and Lady
+Blanche--had come up from the water before the others, and having
+taken their repast were sitting together under the shade of a
+flowering currant-bush, when they chanced to see poor Miss
+Crippletoes very badly used and crowded away from the dish.  Sir
+Muscovy rose to his feet; a few rapid words seemed to pass between
+him and his mate, and then he fell upon the other drake and the
+heartless minions who had persecuted the helpless one, drove them
+far away out of sight, and, returning, went to the corner where the
+victim was cowering, her face to the wall.  He seemed to whisper to
+her, or in some way to convey to her a sense of protection; for
+after a few moments she tremblingly went with him to the dish, and
+hurriedly ate her dinner while he stood by, repulsing the advances
+of the few brown ducks who remained near and seemed inclined to
+attack her.
+
+When she had eaten enough Lady Blanche joined them, and they went
+down the hill together to their favourite swimming-place.  After
+that Miss Crippletoes always followed a little behind her
+protectors, and thus shielded and fed she grew stronger and well-
+feathered, though she was always smaller than she should have been
+and had a lowly manner, keeping a few steps in the rear of her
+superiors and sitting at some distance from their noon resting-
+place.
+
+Phoebe noticed after a while that Lady Blanche was seldom to be
+seen, and Sir Muscovy and Miss Crippletoes often came to their
+meals without her.  The would-be mother refused to inhabit the
+house Phoebe had given her, and for a long time the place she had
+chosen for her sitting could not be found.  At length the Square
+Baby discovered her in a most ideal spot.  A large boulder had
+dropped years ago into the brook that fills our duck-pond; dropped
+and split in halves with the two smooth walls leaning away from
+each other.  A grassy bank towered behind, and on either side of
+the opening, tall bushes made a miniature forest where the romantic
+mother could brood her treasures while her two guardians enjoyed
+the water close by her retreat.
+
+All this happened before my coming to Thornycroft Farm, but it was
+I who named the hero and heroines of the romance when Phoebe had
+told me all the particulars.  Yesterday morning I was sitting by my
+open window.  It was warm, sunny, and still, but in the country
+sounds travel far, and I could hear fowl conversation in various
+parts of the poultry-yard as well as in all the outlying bits of
+territory occupied by our feathered friends.  Hens have only three
+words and a scream in their language, but ducks, having more
+thoughts to express, converse quite fluently, so fluently, in fact,
+that it reminds me of dinner at the Hydropathic Hotel.  I fancy I
+have learned to distinguish seven separate sounds, each varied by
+degrees of intensity, and with upward or downward inflections like
+the Chinese tongue.
+
+In the distance, then, I heard the faint voice of a duck calling as
+if breathless and excited.  While I wondered what was happening, I
+saw Miss Crippletoes struggling up the steep bank above the duck-
+pond.  It was the quickest way from the water to the house, but
+difficult for the little lame webbed feet.  When she reached the
+level grass sward she sank down a moment, exhausted; but when she
+could speak again she cried out, a sharp staccato call, and ran
+forward.
+
+Instantly she was answered from a distant knoll, where for some
+reason Sir Muscovy loved to retire for meditation.  The cries grew
+lower and softer as the birds approached each other, and they met
+at the corner just under my window.  Instantly they put their two
+bills together and the loud cries changed to confiding murmurs.
+Evidently some hurried questions and answers passed between them,
+and then Sir Muscovy waddled rapidly by the quickest path, Miss
+Crippletoes following him at a slower pace, and both passed out of
+sight, using their wings to help their feet down the steep
+declivity.  The next morning, when I wakened early, my first
+thought was to look out, and there on the sunny greensward where
+they were accustomed to be fed, Sir Muscovy, Lady Blanche, and
+their humble maid, Malardina Crippletoes, were scattering their own
+breakfast before the bills of twelve beautiful golden balls of
+ducklings.  The little creatures could never have climbed the bank,
+but must have started from their nest at dawn, coming round by the
+brook to the level at the foot of the garden, and so by slow
+degrees up to the house.
+
+Judging from what I heard and knew of their habits, I am sure the
+excitement of the previous morning was occasioned by the hatching
+of the eggs, and that Lady Blanche had hastily sent her friend to
+call Sir Muscovy, the family remaining together until they could
+bring the babies with them and display their beauty to Phoebe and
+me.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+
+July 14th.
+
+We are not wholly without the pleasures of the town in Barbury
+Green.  Once or twice in a summer, late on a Saturday afternoon, a
+procession of red and yellow vans drives into a field near the
+centre of the village.  By the time the vans are unpacked all the
+children in the community are surrounding the gate of entrance.
+There is rifle-shooting, there is fortune-telling, there are games
+of pitch and toss, and swings, and French bagatelle; and, to crown
+all, a wonderful orchestrion that goes by steam.  The water is
+boiled for the public's tea, and at the same time thrilling strains
+of melody are flung into the air.  There is at present only one
+tune in the orchestrion's repertory, but it is a very good tune;
+though after hearing it three hundred and seven times in a single
+afternoon, it pursues one, sleeping and waking, for the next week.
+Phoebe and I took the Square Baby and went in to this diversified
+entertainment.  There was a small crowd of children at the
+entrance, but as none of them seemed to be provided with pennies,
+and I felt in a fairy godmother mood, I offered them the freedom of
+the place at my expense.
+
+I never purchased more radiant good-will for less money, but the
+combined effect of the well-boiled tea and the boiling orchestrion
+produced many village nightmares, so the mothers told me at chapel
+next morning.
+
+* * *
+
+I have many friends in Barbury Green, and often have a pleasant
+chat with the draper, and the watch-maker, and the chemist.
+
+The last house on the principal street is rather an ugly one, with
+especially nice window curtains.  As I was taking my daily walk to
+the post-office (an entirely unfruitful expedition thus far, as
+nobody has taken the pains to write to me) I saw a nursemaid coming
+out of the gate, wheeling a baby in a perambulator.  She was going
+placidly away from the Green when, far in the distance, she espied
+a man walking rapidly toward us, a heavy Gladstone bag in one hand.
+She gazed fixedly for a moment, her eyes brightening and her cheeks
+flushing with pleasure,--whoever it was, it was an unexpected
+arrival;--then she retraced her steps and, running up the garden-
+path, opened the front door and held an excited colloquy with
+somebody; a slender somebody in a nice print gown and neatly-
+dressed hair, who came to the gate and peeped beyond the hedge
+several times, drawing back between peeps with smiles and
+heightened colour.  She did not run down the road, even when she
+had satisfied herself of the identity of the traveller; perhaps
+that would not have been good form in an English village, for there
+were houses on the opposite side of the way.  She waited until he
+opened the gate, the nursemaid took the bag and looked discreetly
+into the hedge, then the mistress slipped her hand through the
+traveller's arm and walked up the path as if she had nothing else
+in the world to wish for.  The nurse had a part in the joy, for she
+lifted the baby out of the perambulator and showed proudly how much
+he had grown.
+
+It was a dear little scene, and I, a passer-by, had shared in it
+and felt better for it.  I think their content was no less because
+part of it had enriched my life, for happiness, like mercy, is
+twice blessed; it blesses those who are most intimately associated
+in it, and it blesses all those who see it, hear it, feel it, touch
+it, or breathe the same atmosphere.  A laughing, crowing baby in a
+house, one cheerful woman singing about her work, a boy whistling
+at the plough, a romance just suspected, with its miracle of two
+hearts melting into one--the wind's always in the west when you
+have any of these wonder-workers in your neighbourhood.
+
+I have talks too, sometimes, with the old parson, who lives in a
+quaint house with "Parva Domus Magna Quies" cut into the stone over
+the doorway.  He is not a preaching parson, but a retired one,
+almost the nicest kind, I often think.
+
+He has been married thirty years, he tells me; thirty years, spent
+in the one little house with the bricks painted red and grey
+alternately, and the scarlet holly-hocks growing under the windows.
+I am sure they have been sweet, true, kind years, and that his
+heart must be a quiet, peaceful place just like his house and
+garden.
+
+"I was only eleven years old when I fell in love with my wife," he
+told me as we sat on the seat under the lime-tree; he puffing
+cosily at his pipe, I plaiting grasses for a hatband.
+
+"It was just before Sunday-school.  Her mother had dressed her all
+in white muslin like a fairy, but she had stepped on the edge of a
+puddle, and some of the muddy water had bespattered her frock.  A
+circle of children had surrounded her, and some of the motherly
+little girls were on their knees rubbing at the spots anxiously,
+while one of them wiped away the tears that were running down her
+pretty cheeks.  I looked!  It was fatal!  I did not look again, but
+I was smitten to the very heart!  I did not speak to her for six
+years, but when I did, it was all right with both of us, thank God!
+and I've been in love with her ever since, when she behaves
+herself!"
+
+That is the way they speak of love in Barbury Green, and oh! how
+much sweeter and more wholesome it is than the language of the
+town!  Who would not be a Goose Girl, "to win the secret of the
+weed's plain heart"?  It seems to me that in society we are always
+gazing at magic-lantern shows, but here we rest our tired eyes with
+looking at the stars.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+
+July 16th.
+
+Phoebe and I have been to a Hen Conference at Buffington.  It was
+for the purpose of raising the standard of the British Hen, and our
+local Countess, who is much interested in poultry, was in the
+chair.
+
+It was a very learned body, but Phoebe had coached me so well that
+at the noon recess I could talk confidently with the members,
+discussing the various advantages of True and Crossed Minorcas,
+Feverels, Andalusians, Cochin Chinas, Shanghais, and the White
+Leghorn.  (Phoebe, when she pronounces this word, leaves out the
+"h" and bears down heavily on the last syllable, so that it rhymes
+with begone!)
+
+As I was sitting under the trees waiting for Phoebe to finish some
+shopping in the village, a travelling poultry-dealer came along and
+offered to sell me a silver Wyandotte pullet and cockerel.  This
+was a new breed to me and I asked the price, which proved to be
+more than I should pay for a hat in Bond Street.  I hesitated,
+thinking meantime what a delightful parting gift they would be for
+Phoebe; I mean if we ever should part, which seems more and more
+unlikely, as I shall never leave Thornycroft until somebody comes
+properly to fetch me; indeed, unless the "fetching" is done
+somewhat speedily I may decline to go under any circumstances.  My
+indecision as to the purchase was finally banished when the
+poultryman asserted that the fowls had clear open centres all over,
+black lacing entirely round the white centres, were free from white
+edging, and each had a cherry-red eye.  This catalogue of charms
+inflamed my imagination, though it gave me no mental picture of a
+silver Wyandotte fowl, and I paid the money while the dealer
+crammed the chicks, squawking into my five-o'clock tea-basket.
+
+The afternoon session of the conference was most exciting, for we
+reached the subject of imported eggs, an industry that is assuming
+terrifying proportions.  The London hotel egg comes from Denmark,
+it seems,--I should think by sailing vessel, not steamer, but I may
+be wrong.  After we had settled that the British Hen should be
+protected and encouraged, and agreed solemnly to abstain from
+Danish eggs in any form, and made a resolution stating that our
+loyalty to Queen Alexandra would remain undiminished, we argued the
+subject of hen diet.  There was a great difference of opinion here
+and the discussion was heated; the honorary treasurer standing for
+pulped mangold and flint grit, the chair insisting on barley meal
+and randans, while one eloquent young woman declared, to loud cries
+of "'Ear, 'ear!" that rice pudding and bone chips produce more eggs
+to the square hen than any other sort of food.  Impassioned orators
+arose here and there in the audience demanding recognition for beef
+scraps, charcoal, round corn or buckwheat.  Foods were regarded
+from various standpoints:  as general invigorators, growth
+assisters, and egg producers.  A very handsome young farmer carried
+off final honours, and proved to the satisfaction of all the
+feminine poultry-raisers that green young hog bones fresh cut in
+the Banner Bone Breaker (of which he was the agent) possessed a
+nutritive value not to be expressed in human language.
+
+Phoebe was distinctly nervous when I rose to say a few words on
+poultry breeding, announcing as my topic "Mothers, Stepmothers,
+Foster-Mothers, and Incubators."  Protected by the consciousness
+that no one in the assemblage could possibly know me, I made a
+distinct success in my maiden speech; indeed, I somewhat overshot
+the mark, for the Countess in the chair sent me a note asking me to
+dine with her that evening.  I suppressed the note and took Phoebe
+away before the proceedings were finished, vanishing from the scene
+of my triumphs like a veiled prophet.
+
+Just as we were passing out the door we paused to hear the report
+of a special committee whose chairman read the following
+resolutions:-
+
+WHEREAS,--It has pleased the Almighty to remove from our midst our
+greatest Rose Comb Buff Orpington fancier and esteemed friend,
+Albert Edward Sheridain; therefore be it
+
+RESOLVED,--That the next edition of our catalogue contain an
+illustrated memorial page in his honour and
+
+RESOLVED,--That the Rose Comb Buff Orpington Club extend to the
+bereaved family their heartfelt sympathy.
+
+The handsome young farmer followed us out to our trap, invited us
+to attend the next meeting of the R. C. B. O. Club, of which he was
+the secretary, and asked if I were intending to "show."  I
+introduced Phoebe as the senior partner, and she concealed the fact
+that we possessed but one Buff Orpington, and he was a sad
+"invaleed" not suitable for exhibition.  The farmer's expression as
+he looked at me was almost lover-like, and when he pressed a bit of
+paper into my hand I was sure it must be an offer of marriage.  It
+was in fact only a circular describing the Banner Bone Breaker.  It
+closed with an appeal to Buff Orpington breeders to raise and ever
+raise the standard, bidding them remember, in the midst of a low-
+minded and sordid civilisation, that the rose comb should be small
+and neat, firmly set on, with good working, a nice spike at the
+back lying well down to head, and never, under any circumstances,
+never sticking up.  This adjuration somewhat alarmed us as Phoebe
+and I had been giving our Buff Orpington cockerel the most drastic
+remedies for his languid and prostrate comb.
+
+Coming home we alighted from the trap to gather hogweed for the
+rabbits.  I sat by the wayside lazily and let Phoebe gather the
+appetising weed, which grows along the thorniest hedges in close
+proximity to nettles and thistles.
+
+Workmen were trudging along with their luncheon-baskets of woven
+bulrushes slung over their shoulders.  Fields of ripening grain lay
+on either hand, the sun shining on their every shade of green and
+yellow, bronze and orange, while the breeze stirred the bearded
+barley into a rippling golden sea.
+
+Phoebe asked me if the people I had left behind at the Hydropathic
+were my relatives.
+
+"Some of them are of remote consanguinity," I responded evasively,
+and the next question was hushed upon her awe-stricken tongue, as I
+intended.
+
+"They are obeying my wish to be let alone, there's no doubt of
+that," I was thinking.  "For my part, I like a little more spirit,
+and a little less "letter"!"
+
+As the word "letter" flitted through my thoughts, I pulled one from
+my pocket and glanced through it carelessly.  It arrived, somewhat
+tardily, only last night, or I should not have had it with me.  I
+wore the same dress to the post-office yesterday that I wore to the
+Hen Conference to-day, and so it chanced to be still in the pocket.
+If it had been anything I valued, of course I should have lost or
+destroyed it by mistake; it is only silly, worthless little things
+like this that keep turning up and turning up after one has
+forgotten their existence.
+
+
+"You are a mystery!" [it ran.]  "I can apprehend, but not
+comprehend you.  I know you in part.  I understand various bits of
+your nature; but my knowledge is always fragmentary and
+disconnected, and when I attempt to make a whole of the mosaics I
+merely get a kaleidoscopic effect.  Do you know those geographical
+dissected puzzles that they give to children?  You remind me of one
+of them.
+
+"I have spent many charming (and dangerous) hours trying to "put
+you together"; but I find, when I examine my picture closely, that
+after all I've made a purple mountain grow out of a green tree;
+that my river is running up a steep hillside; and that the pretty
+milkmaid, who should be wandering in the forest, is standing on her
+head with her pail in the air
+
+"Do you understand yourself clearly?  Or is it just possible that
+when you dive to the depths of your own consciousness, you
+sometimes find the pretty milkmaid standing on her head?  I
+wonder!" . . .
+
+
+Ah, well, it is no wonder that he wonders!   So do I, for that
+matter!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+
+July 17th.
+
+Thornycroft Farm seems to be the musical centre of the universe.
+
+When I wake very early in the morning I lie in a drowsy sort of
+dream, trying to disentangle, one from the other, the various bird
+notes, trills, coos, croons, chirps, chirrups, and warbles.
+Suddenly there falls on the air a delicious, liquid, finished song;
+so pure, so mellow, so joyous, that I go to the window and look out
+at the morning world, half awakened, like myself.
+
+There is I know not what charm in a window that does not push up,
+but opens its lattices out into the greenness.  And mine is like a
+little jewelled door, for the sun is shining from behind the
+chimneys and lighting the tiny diamond panes with amber flashes.
+
+A faint delicate haze lies over the meadow, and rising out of it,
+and soaring toward the blue is the lark, flinging out that
+matchless matin song, so rich, so thrilling, so lavish!  As the
+blithe melody fades away, I hear the plaintive ballad-fragments of
+the robin on a curtsying branch near my window; and there is always
+the liquid pipe of the thrush, who must quaff a fairy goblet of dew
+between his songs, I should think, so fresh and eternally young is
+his note.
+
+There is another beautiful song that I follow whenever I hear it,
+straining my eyes to the treetops, yet never finding a bird that I
+can identify as the singer.  Can it be the -
+
+
+"Ousel-cock so black of hue,
+With orange-tawny bill"?
+
+
+He is called the poet-laureate of the primrose time, but I don't
+know whether he sings in midsummer, and I have not seen him
+hereabouts.  I must write and ask my dear Man of the North.  The
+Man of the North, I sometimes think, had a Fairy Grandmother who
+was a robin; and perhaps she made a nest of fresh moss and put him
+in the green wood when he was a wee bairnie, so that he waxed wise
+in bird-lore without knowing it.  At all events, describe to him
+the cock of a head, the glance of an eye, the tip-up of a tail, or
+the sheen of a feather, and he will name you the bird.  Near-
+sighted he is, too, the Man of the North, but that is only for
+people.
+
+The Square Baby and I have a new game.
+
+I bought a doll's table and china tea-set in Buffington.  We put it
+under an apple-tree in the side garden, where the scarlet lightning
+grows so tall and the Madonna lilies stand so white against the
+flaming background.  We built a little fence around it, and every
+afternoon at tea-time we sprinkle seeds and crumbs in the dishes,
+water in the tiny cups, drop a cherry in each of the fruit-plates,
+and have a the chantant for the birdies.  We sometimes invite an
+"invaleed" duckling, or one of the baby rabbits, or the peacock, in
+which case the cards read:-
+
+
+Thornycroft Farm.
+The pleasure of your company is requested
+at a
+The Chantant
+Under the Apple Tree.
+Music at five.
+
+
+It is a charming game, as I say, but I'd far rather play it with
+the Man of the North; he is so much younger than the Square Baby,
+and so much more responsive, too.
+
+Thornycroft Farm is a sweet place, too, of odours as well as
+sounds.  The scent of the hay is for ever in the nostrils, the
+hedges are thick with wild honeysuckle, so deliciously fragrant,
+the last of the June roses are lingering to do their share, and
+blackberry blossoms and ripening fruit as well.
+
+I have never known a place in which it is so easy to be good.  I
+have not said a word, nor scarcely harboured a thought, that was
+not lovely and virtuous since I entered these gates, and yet there
+are those who think me fantastic, difficult, hard to please,
+unreasonable!
+
+I believe the saints must have lived in the country mostly (I am
+certain they never tried Hydropathic hotels), and why anybody with
+a black heart and natural love of wickedness should not simply buy
+a poultry farm and become an angel, I cannot understand.
+
+Living with animals is really a very improving and wholesome kind
+of life, to the person who will allow himself to be influenced by
+their sensible and high-minded ideals.  When you come to think
+about it, man is really the only animal that ever makes a fool of
+himself; the others are highly civilised, and never make mistakes.
+I am going to mention this when I write to somebody, sometime; I
+mean if I ever do.  To be sure, our human life is much more
+complicated than theirs, and I believe when the other animals
+notice our errors of judgment they make allowances.  The bee is as
+busy as a bee, and the beaver works like a beaver, but there their
+responsibility ends.  The bee doesn't have to go about seeing that
+other bees are not crowded into unsanitary tenements or victimised
+by the sweating system.  When the beaver's day of toil is over he
+doesn't have to discuss the sphere, the rights, or the voting
+privileges of beaveresses; all he has to do is to work like a
+beaver, and that is comparatively simple.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+
+I have been studying The Young Poultry Keeper's Friend of late.  If
+there is anything I dislike and deplore, it is the possession of
+knowledge which I cannot put to practical use.  Having discovered
+an interesting disease called Scaly Leg in the July number, I took
+the magazine out into the poultry-yard and identified the malady on
+three hens and a cock.  Phoebe joined me in the diagnosis and we
+treated the victims with a carbolic lotion and scrubbed them with
+vaseline.
+
+As Phoebe and I grow wise in medical lore the case of Cannibal Ann
+assumes a different aspect.  As the bibulous man quaffs more and
+more flagons of beer and wine when his daily food is ham, salt
+fish, and cabbage, so does the hen avenge her wrongs of diet and
+woes of environment.  Cannibal Ann, herself, has, so far as we
+know, been raised in a Christian manner and enjoyed all the
+advantages of modern methods; but her maternal parent may have
+lived in some heathen poultry-yard which was asphalted or bricked
+or flagged, so that she was debarred from scratching in Mother
+Earth and was forced to eat her own shells in self-defence.
+
+* * *
+
+The Square Baby is not particularly attracted by the poultry as a
+whole, save when it is boiled with bacon or roasted with bread-
+sauce; but he is much interested in the "invaleeds."  Whenever
+Phoebe and I start for the hospital with the tobacco-pills, the tin
+of paraffin, and the bottle of oil, he is very much in evidence.
+Perhaps he has a natural leaning toward the medical profession; at
+any rate, when pain and anguish wring the brow, he is in close
+attendance upon the ministering angels.
+
+Now it is necessary for the physician to have practice as well as
+theory, so the Square Baby, being left to himself this afternoon,
+proceeded to perfect himself in some of the healing arts used by
+country practitioners.
+
+When discovered, he was seated in front of the wire-covered "run"
+attached to a coop occupied by the youngest goslings.  A couple of
+bottles and a box stood by his side, and I should think he had
+administered a cup of sweet oil, a pint of paraffin, and a quarter
+of a pound of tobacco during his clinic.  He had used the remedies
+impartially, sometimes giving the paraffin internally and rubbing
+the patient's head with tobacco or oil, sometimes the reverse.
+
+Several goslings leaned languidly against the netting, or supported
+themselves by the edge of the water-dish, while others staggered
+and reeled about with eyes half closed.
+
+It was Mrs. Heaven who caught her son red-handed, so to speak.  She
+was dressed in her best, and just driving off to Woodmucket to
+spend a day or two with her married daughter, and soothe her nerves
+with the uproar incident to a town of six hundred inhabitants.  She
+delayed her journey a half-hour--long enough, in fact, to change
+her black silk waist for a loose sacque which would give her arms
+full and comfortable play.  The joy and astonishment that greeted
+the Square Baby on his advent, five years ago, was forgotten for
+the first time in his brief life, and he was treated precisely as
+any ordinary wrongdoer would have been treated under the same
+circumstances, summarily and smartly; the "wepping," as Phoebe
+would say, being Mrs. Heaven's hand.
+
+All but one of the goslings lived, like thousands of others who
+recover in spite of the doctors, but the Square Baby's interest in
+the healing art is now perceptibly lessened.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+
+July 18th.
+
+The day was Friday; Phoebe's day to go to Buffington with eggs and
+chickens and rabbits; her day to solicit orders for ducklings and
+goslings.  The village cart was ready in the stable; Mr. and Mrs.
+Heaven were in Woodmucket; I was eating my breakfast (which I
+remember was an egg and a rasher) when Phoebe came in, a figure of
+woe.
+
+The Square Baby was ill, very ill, and would not permit her to
+leave him and go to market.  Would I look at him?  For he must have
+dowsed 'imself as well as the goslings yesterday; anyways he was
+strong of paraffin and tobacco, though he 'ad 'ad a good barth.
+
+I prescribed for Albert Edward, who was as uncomfortable and
+feverish as any little sinner in the county of Sussex, and I then
+promptly proposed going to Buffington in Phoebe's place.
+
+She did not think it at all proper, and said that, notwithstanding
+my cotton gown and sailor hat, I looked quite, quite the lydy, and
+it would never do.
+
+"I cannot get any new orders," said I, "but I can certainly leave
+the rabbits and eggs at the customary places.  I know Argent's
+Dining Parlours, and Songhurst's Tea Rooms, and the Six Bells Inn,
+as well as you do."
+
+So, donning a pair of Phoebe's large white cotton gloves with open-
+work wrists (than which I always fancy there is no one article that
+so disguises the perfect lydy), I set out upon my travels, upborne
+by a lively sense of amusement that was at least equal to my
+feeling that I was doing Phoebe Heaven a good turn.
+
+Prices in dressed poultry were fluctuating, but I had a copy of The
+Trade Review, issued that very day, and was able to get some idea
+of values and the state of the market as I jogged along.  The
+general movement, I learned, was moderate and of a "selective"
+character.  Choice large capons and ducks were in steady demand,
+but I blushed for my profession when I read that roasting chickens
+were running coarse, staggy, and of irregular value.  Old hens were
+held firmly at sixpence, and it is my experience that they always
+have to be, at whatever price.  Geese were plenty, dull, and weak.
+Old cocks,--why don't they say roosters?--declined to threepence
+ha'penny on Thursday in sympathy with fowls,--and who shall say
+that chivalry is dead?  Turkeys were a trifle steadier, and there
+was a speculative movement in limed eggs.  All this was
+illuminating, and I only wished I were quite certain whether the
+sympathetic old roosters were threepence ha'penny apiece, or a
+pound.
+
+Everything happened as it should, on this first business journey of
+my life, which is equivalent to saying that nothing happened at
+all.  Songhurst's Tea Rooms took five dozen eggs and told me to
+bring six dozen the next week.  Argent's Dining Parlours purchased
+three pairs of chickens and four rabbits.  The Six Bells found the
+last poultry somewhat tough and tasteless; whereupon I said that
+our orders were more than we could possibly fill, still I hoped we
+could go on "selling them," as we never liked to part with old
+customers, no matter how many new ones there were.  Privately, I
+understood the complaint only too well, for I knew the fowls in
+question very intimately.  Two of them were the runaway rooster and
+the gadabout hen that never wanted to go to bed with the others.
+The third was Cannibal Ann.  I should have expected them to be
+tough, but I cannot believe they were lacking in flavour.
+
+The only troublesome feature of the trip was that Mrs. Sowerbutt's
+lodgers had suddenly left for London and she was unable to take the
+four rabbits as she had hoped; but as an offset to that piece of
+ill-fortune the Coke and Coal Yard and the Bicycle Repairing Rooms
+came out into the street, and, stepping up to the trap, requested
+regular weekly deliveries of eggs and chickens, and hoped that I
+would be able to bring them myself.  And so, in a happy frame of
+mind, I turned out of the Buffington main street, and was jogging
+along homeward, when a very startling thing happened; namely, a
+whole verse of the Bailiff's Daughter of Islington:-
+
+
+"And as she went along the high road,
+The weather being hot and dry,
+She sat her down upon a green bank,
+And her true love came riding by."
+
+
+That true lovers are given to riding by, in ballads, I know very
+well, but I hardly supposed they did so in real life, especially
+when every precaution had been taken to avert such a catastrophe.
+I had told the Barbury Green postmistress, on the morning of my
+arrival, not to give the Thornycroft address to anybody whatsoever,
+but finding, as the days passed, that no one was bold enough or
+sensible enough to ask for it, I haughtily withdrew my prohibition.
+About this time I began sending envelopes, carefully addressed in a
+feigned hand, to a certain person at the Oxenbridge Hydro.  These
+envelopes contained no word of writing, but held, on one day, only
+a bit of down from a hen's breast, on another, a goose-quill, on
+another, a glossy tail-feather, on another, a grain of corn, and so
+on.  These trifles were regarded by me not as degrading or
+unmaidenly hints and suggestions, but simply as tests of
+intelligence.  Could a man receive tokens of this sort and fail to
+put two and two together?  I feel that I might possibly support
+life with a domineering and autocratic husband,--and there is every
+prospect that I shall be called upon to do so,--but not with a
+stupid one.  Suppose one were linked for ever to a man capable of
+asking,--"Did YOU send those feathers? . . . How was I to guess? .
+. . How was a fellow to know they came from you? . . . What on
+earth could I suppose they meant? . . . What clue did they offer me
+as to your whereabouts? . . . Am I a Sherlock Holmes?"--No, better
+eternal celibacy than marriage with such a being!
+
+These were the thoughts that had been coursing through my goose-
+girl mind while I had been selling dressed poultry, but in some way
+they had not prepared me for the appearance of the aforesaid true
+love.
+
+To see the very person whom one has left civilisation to avoid is
+always more or less surprising, and to make the meeting less
+likely, Buffington is even farther from Oxenbridge than Barbury
+Green.  The creature was well mounted (ominous, when he came to
+override my caprice!) and he looked bigger, and, yes, handsomer,
+though that doesn't signify, and still more determined than when I
+saw him last; although goodness knows that timidity and feebleness
+of purpose were not in striking evidence on that memorable
+occasion.  I had drawn up under the shade of a tree ostensibly to
+eat some cherries, thinking that if I turned my face away I might
+pass unrecognised.  It was a stupid plan, for if I had whipped up
+the mare and driven on, he of course, would have had to follow, and
+he has too much dignity and self-respect to shriek recriminations
+into a woman's ear from a distance.
+
+He approached with deliberation, reined in his horse, and lifted
+his hat ceremoniously.  He has an extremely shapely head, but I did
+not show that the sight of it melted in the least the ice of my
+resolve; whereupon we talked, not very freely at first,--men are so
+stiff when they consider themselves injured.  However, silence is
+even more embarrassing than conversation, so at length I begin:-
+
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"It is a lovely day."
+
+True Love.--"Yes, but the drought is getting rather oppressive,
+don't you think?"
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"The crops certainly need rain, and the feed
+is becoming scarce."
+
+True Love.--"Are you a farmer's wife?"
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"Oh no! that is a promotion to look forward
+to; I am now only a Goose Girl."
+
+True Love.--"Indeed!  If I wished to be severe I might remark:
+that I am sure you have found at last your true vocation!"
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"It was certainly through no desire to please
+YOU that I chose it."
+
+True Love.--"I am quite sure of that!  Are you staying in this
+part?"
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"Oh no!  I live many miles distant, over an
+extremely rough road.  And you?"
+
+True Love.--"I am still at the Hydropathic; or at least my luggage
+is there."
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"It must be very pleasant to attract you so
+long."
+
+True Love.--"Not so pleasant as it was."
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"No?  A new proprietor, I suppose."
+
+True Love.--"No; same proprietor; but the house is empty."
+
+Bailiff's Daughter (yawning purposely).--"That is strange; the
+hotels are usually so full at this season.  Why did so many leave?"
+
+True Love.--"As a matter of fact, only one left.  "Full" and
+"empty" are purely relative terms.  I call a hotel full when it has
+you in it, empty when it hasn't."
+
+Bailiff's Daughter (dying to laugh, but concealing her feelings).--
+"I trust my bulk does not make the same impression on the general
+public!  Well, I won't detain you longer; good afternoon; I must go
+home to my evening work."
+
+True Love.--"I will accompany you."
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"If you are a gentleman you will remain where
+you are."
+
+True Love.--"In the road?  Perhaps; but if I am a man I shall
+follow you; they always do, I notice.  What are those foolish
+bundles in the back of that silly cart?"
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"Feed for the pony, please, sir; fish for
+dinner; randans and barley meal for the poultry; and four unsold
+rabbits.  Wouldn't you like them?  Only one and sixpence apiece.
+Shot at three o'clock this morning."
+
+True Love.--"Thanks; I don't like mine shot so early."
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"Oh, well! doubtless I shall be able to
+dispose of them on my way home, though times is 'ard!"
+
+True Love.--"Do you mean that you will "peddle" them along the
+road?"
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"You understand me better than usual,--in fact
+to perfection."
+
+He dismounts and strides to the back of the cart, lifts the covers,
+seizes the rabbits, flings some silver contemptuously into the
+basket, and looks about him for a place to bury his bargain.  A
+small boy approaching in the far distance will probably bag the
+game.
+
+Bailiff's Daughter (modestly).--"Thanks for your trade, sir, rather
+ungraciously bestowed, and we 'opes for a continuance of your past
+fyvors."
+
+True Love (leaning on the wheel of the trap).--"Let us stop this
+nonsense.  What did you hope to gain by running away?"
+
+Bailiff 's Daughter.--"Distance and absence."
+
+True Love.--"You knew you couldn't prevent my offering myself to
+you sometime or other."
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"Perhaps not; but I could at least defer it,
+couldn't I?"
+
+True Love.--"Why postpone the inevitable?"
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"Doubtless I shrank from giving you the pain
+of a refusal."
+
+True Love.--"Perhaps; but do you know what I suspect?"
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"I'm not a suspicious person, thank goodness!"
+
+True Love.--"That, on the contrary, you are wilfully withholding
+from me the joy of acceptance."
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"If I intended to accept you, why did I run
+away?"
+
+True Love.--"To make yourself more desirable and precious, I
+suppose."
+
+Bailiff's Daughter (with the most confident coquetry).--"Did I
+succeed?"
+
+True Love.--"No; you failed utterly."
+
+Bailiff's Daughter (secretly piqued).--"Then I am glad I tried it."
+
+True Love.--"You couldn't succeed because you were superlatively
+desirable and precious already; but you should never have
+experimented.  Don't you know that Love is a high explosive?"
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"Is it?  Then it ought always to be labelled
+"dangerous," oughtn't it?  But who thought of suggesting matches?
+I'm sure I didn't!"
+
+True Love.--"No such luck; I wish you would."
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"According to your theory, if you apply a
+match to Love it is likely to 'go off.'"
+
+True Love.--"I wish you would try it on mine and await the result.
+Come now, you'll have to marry somebody, sometime."
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"I confess I don't see the necessity."
+
+True Love (morosely).--"You're the sort of woman men won't leave in
+undisturbed spinsterhood; they'll keep on badgering you."
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"Oh, I don't mind the badgering of a number of
+men; it's rather nice.  It's the one badger I find obnoxious."
+
+True Love (impatiently).--"That's just the perversity of things.  I
+could put a stop to the protestations of the many; I should like
+nothing better--but the pertinacity of the one!  Ah, well!  I can't
+drop that without putting an end to my existence."
+
+Bailiff's Daughter (politely).--"I shouldn't think of suggesting
+anything so extreme."
+
+True Love (quoting).--"'Mrs. Hauksbee proceeded to take the conceit
+out of Pluffles as you remove the ribs of an umbrella before re-
+covering.'  However, you couldn't ask me anything seriously that I
+wouldn't do, dear Mistress Perversity."
+
+Bailiff's Daughter (yielding a point).--"I'll put that boldly to
+the proof.  Say you don't love me!"
+
+True Love (seizing his advantage).--"I don't!  It's imbecile and
+besotted devotion!  Tell me, when may I come to take you away?"
+
+Bailiff's Daughter (sighing).--"It's like asking me to leave
+Heaven."
+
+True Love.--"I know it; she told me where to find you,--Thornycroft
+is the seventh poultry-farm I've visited,--but you could never
+leave Heaven, you can't be happy without poultry, why that is a
+wish easily gratified.  I'll get you a farm to-morrow; no, it's
+Saturday, and the real estate offices close at noon, but on Monday,
+without fail.  Your ducks and geese, always carrying it along with
+you.  All you would have to do is to admit me; Heaven is full of
+twos.  If you shall swim on a crystal lake--Phoebe told me what a
+genius you have for getting them out of the muddy pond; she was
+sitting beside it when I called, her hand in that of a straw-
+coloured person named Gladwish, and the ground in her vicinity
+completely strewn with votive offerings.  You shall splash your
+silver sea with an ivory wand; your hens shall have suburban
+cottages, each with its garden; their perches shall be of satin-
+wood and their water dishes of mother-of-pearl.  You shall be the
+Goose Girl and I will be the Swan Herd--simply to be near you--for
+I hate live poultry.  Dost like the picture?  It's a little like
+Claude Melnotte's, I confess.  The fact is I am not quite sane;
+talking with you after a fortnight of the tabbies at the Hydro is
+like quaffing inebriating vodka after Miffin's Food!  May I come
+to-morrow?"
+
+Bailiffs Daughter (hedging).--"I shall be rather busy; the Crossed
+Minorca hen comes off to-morrow."
+
+True Love.--"Oh, never mind!  I'll take her off to-night when I
+escort you to the farm; then she'll get a day's advantage."
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"And rob fourteen prospective chicks of a
+mother; nay, lose the chicks themselves?  Never!"
+
+True Love.--"So long as you are a Goose Girl, does it make any
+difference whose you are?  Is it any more agreeable to be Mrs.
+Heaven's Goose Girl than mine?"
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"Ah! but in one case the term of service is
+limited; in the other, permanent."
+
+True Love.--"But in the one case you are the slave of the employer,
+in the other the employer of the slave.  Why did you run away?"
+
+Bailiff's Daughter.--"A man's mind is too dull an instrument to
+measure a woman's reason; even my own fails sometimes to deal with
+all its delicate shades; but I think I must have run away chiefly
+to taste the pleasure of being pursued and brought back.  If it is
+necessary to your happiness that you should explore all the
+Bluebeard chambers of my being, I will confess further that it has
+taken you nearly three weeks to accomplish what I supposed you
+would do in three days!"
+
+True Love (after a well-spent interval).--"To-morrow, then; shall
+we say before breakfast?  All, do!  Why not?  Well, then,
+immediately after breakfast, and I breakfast at seven nowadays, and
+sometimes earlier.  Do take off those ugly cotton gloves, dear;
+they are five sizes too large for you, and so rough and baggy to
+the touch!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The Diary of a Goose Girl, by Wiggin
+