se. 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.

{Out of favour with the entire family: p61.jpg}

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
setti