the Pricket was so much
excited to hear of other Deer that he entreated his mother to go where
the Partridge had told them. And they went just as she had said, over
the fields and into the wood that she spoke of, but to their
disappointment saw no sign of a deer there. So they passed on through
the wood to the valley again, and then they came to a park with the
river running through it, and great trees bigger than he had ever
seen, beech and oak and lime and chestnut, some in rows and some in
clumps, a beautiful expanse of green, all dripping in the morning dew.
And there the Pricket saw deer, and he was so delighted that he ran
on by himself to speak to them; but he was puzzled, for some of them
were black, and some were white, and some were red, and the greater
part were spotted; while not one was near so big as he was, though
many of them had growing horns as big as his own and bigger. So he
made sure that they must all be calves with some new description of
horn, and going up to the biggest of them he said rather
patronisingly, "Good morning, my little friend."

But the other turned round and said, "Little friend! Do you know who I
am, sir? I am the Master-Buck of this park, sir, and I'll trouble you
not to call me your little friend."

"But why don't you come to the woods and on to the moor?" said the
Pricket, astonished. "I've never seen you there."

"Did you hear me say that I was the Master-Buck of this park, sir?"
said the Fallow-Buck, "and do you know what that means? I am lord of
the whole of this herd, and master of everything inside this
park-fence. What do I want with woods and moors, when I have all this
beautiful green park for a kingdom, and all this grass to feed on in
the summer, and hay, sir, hay brought to me in the winter? Do you get
hay brought to you in the winter, sir?"

"Why," broke in the Pricket, "do you mean to say that you can't feed
yourself?"

But here the Hind trotted up and fetched her son away. "They are only
miserable little tame Fallow-Deer," she said. "You should never have
lowered yourself to speak to them."

"No, mother," he answered; "but fancy preferring to live in a wretched
little park instead of wandering free through the woods and over the
moor! Do let me go back and thrash him."

But when the Fallow-Buck heard this he trotted away as quick as he
could; and mother and son went back into the wood. And as they entered
it a very handsome bird with a grey back and a ro