'em.'

'Yes, sir.'

Mr. Curtenty walked away towards the house.

'Mester!' Pond called after him, flashing the lantern.

'Well, lad?'

'There's no gander i' this lot.'

'Hast forgotten to count thysen?' Mr. Curtenty answered blithely from
the shelter of the side-door.

But within himself he was a little crest-fallen to think that the
surviving gander should have escaped his vigilance, even in the
darkness. He had set out to drive the geese home, and he had driven them
home, most of them. He had kept his temper, his dignity, his
cheerfulness. He had got a bargain in geese. So much was indisputable
ground for satisfaction. And yet the feeling of an anticlimax would not
be dismissed. Upon the whole, his transit lacked glory. It had begun in
splendour, but it had ended in discomfort and almost ignominy.
Nevertheless, Mr. Curtenty's unconquerable soul asserted itself in a
quite genuine and tuneful whistle as he entered the house.

The fate of the Brent gander was never ascertained.

II

The dining-room of The Firs was a spacious and inviting refectory, which
owed nothing of its charm to William Morris, Regent Street, or the Arts
and Crafts Society. Its triple aim, was richness, solidity, and comfort,
but especially comfort; and this aim was achieved in new oak furniture
of immovable firmness, in a Turkey carpet which swallowed up the feet
like a feather bed, and in large oil-paintings, whose darkly-glinting
frames were a guarantee of their excellence. On a winter's night, as
now, the room was at its richest, solidest, most comfortable. The blue
plush curtains were drawn on their stout brass rods across door and
French window. Finest selected silkstone fizzed and flamed in a patent
grate which had the extraordinary gift of radiating heat into the
apartment instead of up the chimney. The shaded Welsbach lights of the
chandelier cast a dazzling luminance on the tea-table of snow and
silver, while leaving the pictures in a gloom so discreet that not
Ruskin himself could have decided whether these were by Whistler or
Peter Paul Rubens. On either side of the marble mantelpiece were two
easy-chairs of an immense, incredible capacity, chairs of crimson plush
for Titans, chairs softer than moss, more pliant than a loving heart,
more enveloping than a caress. In one of these chairs, that to the left
of the fireplace, Mr. Curtenty was accustomed to snore every Saturday
and Sunday afternoon, and almost every evening. Th